This past week my PC started locking up completely at various times of the day. I believe it started on Tuesday. I would try to move the mouse and nothing happened. No reaction to the keyboard or anything else. All I could do was shut if off and restart. I tried everything I could think of to see what was killing it but it just kept freezing.
On Saturday night it froze and this time it would not reboot. The drive was trashed. I run a monthly copy of the entire drive to a separate physical drive so I wasn't overly worried. I put that drive into the system and was back to where I was on 5/3. At that point I figured whatever had screwed up my PC was behind me.
Norton warned me that my system was outdated so I ran Live Update. I then started copying the data files that had changed since 5/3 from their own offline storage. Happily I'm a big believer in multiple copies of things. Went to grab some dinner, came back and the PC was locked solid once again. The one and only thing that had changed since the system was running without issue on 5.3 was the Live Update.
I started reviewing the sequence of events and realized I could not recall a time when the system had frozen as I was actively using it. Each time was when I went to use it I had been taking a call or something when it froze. That made me realize it was only happening when the system was idle. And the only thing I have set to run when it's idle that I would think of was Idle Time Scan.
I disabled that and now the system just stayed up for 12+ hours even though idle - a new record since this all started this week. I am, as one might guess, pretty upset at Norton for this issue. I have to finish restoring all of this data, then will need to rebuild the trashed drive, reinstall and reconfigure some apps added since then, like Photoshop CS5, which means I get to deal with license issues with Adobe. All of this due to my system completely locking up on me during these scans.
It looks like I'm running Norton Internet Security 17.7.0.12 on XP Pro Sp3. Anyone else been suffering through this?
Do you have anything else scanning on your system like Acronis or something similar? I'm wondering if two scans running at the same time is causing the hang.
No, nothing else. And everything else was fine until this latest version downloaded. The only thing I had added lately was CS5, and that was not on the 5/3 drive. The system has been rock solid until this past week. With Idle Scan off it's running ok, so there's definitely something screwy in this latest update - at least for me.
Sometimes the version changes don't go in cleanly. Do you recall if your machine required a reboot after the version update? Apparently some did and some did not.
The latest version available from the website is still 17.6.0.32. You could try uninstalling NIS using the removal tool, reinstalling the available version, and then run liveupdate until the version change. Make sure to reboot even if the system doesn't call for it. Sometimes, a total shut down works better than a restart.
I don't recall a reboot being required on the original drive, but it did ask for a reboot on the updating of the 5/3 drive. I will try the remove and reinstall later, once I finish getting things restored from this mess. I had a lot of data to put back. Sure opens your eyes to how many things you do in a month - and sure makes you glad for backups...
I would consider doing a free scan of the programs and data that you are putting back on your computer. It is possible that there might be some malware which is responsible for this. You could try a scan with the free version of Malwarebytes to be found here.
Download the free version, install and update then run a FULL scan. After the scan completes you should post the logs back to this thread.
It is a safer location to get the program from than malwarebytes themselves because some malware creators have large lists of sites that they block. Please be careful to down load the correct program ----the FREE version of MALWAREBYTES
(Thanks to Delph for providing the alternative site)
Thanks, floplot, but I had already done that during the past week of trying to figure out why the system was freezing.
After I reinstalled my 5/3 drive the only program type change made was Live Update. I then started copying JPG files from the backup device and the PC froze when idle. Since stopping Idle Time scan the files copied without issue. As a result I'm sure the issue is with the scan.
Glad to have found this thread. I am having the same problems with my system locking up when idle scan time runs. I have tried to uninstall the NIS and the system seems to be working after that. However, I didnt use the Norton removal tool. Not sure if some registry on it is causing it because its doing the same thing when I upgraded to NIS 2010. When live update ran and caused all these issues, I wasn't prompted to restart the system like it usually does. Will try to run Norton removal tool and reinstall then. But, will the removal tool also remove my log ins to numerous sites and accounts that I have connected to NIS? I'm even contemplating reinstalling to factory installed software now. Now, I couldnt get my laptop to start normally but only on safe mode. Without NIS, it seems to work normally. However, I have to have NIS installed to access my log ins.
Anyone has other suggestions, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.
I would suggest running the removal tool twice with a reboot after each run. Also if you had any other security program installed before your Norton product, you should run the removal tool from the previous company also.
You can save the identity safe information by following these instructions and then put them back into your reinstalled product.
Please follow these instructions to save your Identity Safe information by creating NPM file.
MDTURNER - I guess I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why I would need malwarebytes to do what I thought Norton was supposed to do, namely ferret out issues and protect my PC.
In any event, I ran the Norton removal tool to completely remove all Norton software. This was quite a lengthy process (about 7 hours) as I had to delete the GOBACK history from two 1GB drives. I reran a second time as suggested. I then ran a full malwarebytes scan, no issues reported. I then reinstalled NIS 2010, which updated itself. The system then locked when idle. I removed it yet again, and installed a competitors product. In day 2 of no locks so far, knock wood.
I've been a loyal Norton customer since PCs first needed it, but this has been a really disappointing experience. A Google check for this symptom shows I'm not alone. In the minority, for sure, but I can't afford to keep losing days worth of productivity doing restores of data and OS, deletes and reloads of NIS, etc. If there's some sort of debugging tool that can be used to help nail this down then great, but so far my only cure has been to dump Norton completely.
MDTURNER - I guess I'm at a bit of a loss to understand why I would need malwarebytes to do what I thought Norton was supposed to do, namely ferret out issues and protect my PC.
Bill
Hi Bill
Malwarebytes is often recommended in these forums as a secondary check to supplement the checks done by Norton. As you will no doubt be aware, no anti-virus product can cover 100% of malware so it is always a good idea, where infections is suspected, to supplement your Norton Scanner with a second on-demand scanner.
As I see it the advantage that Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware free versions have, and why we recommend them here, is that the malware writers are always one step ahead of the defence and while things like heuristic detection and other defensive technology does a remarkable job it cannot be perfect.
By contrast, MWB and SAS in the free versions we recommend are not defensive but detection devices so that it is easier in fact to detect something has changed than to catch malware on the fly.
GOBACK is not compatible with NIS. Scanning of both products will produce the problem you have. GOBACK is no longer offered by Symantec; it has been replaced with Ghost. Yes, this is not the same type of product but the constant scanning of GOBACK will interfere with the AV scanning of NIS (as you have found out).
Check if you would like by removing GOBACK and installing NIS. The scans will no longer freeze.
Goback is running perfectly well on three other systems that are running NIS. It was running perfectly well on this one system until the latest update applied itself. I see that Goback has been discontinued, and was planning on stopping using it as I move to Windows 7, but I haven't seen anything in a FAQ on the Norton site saying it doesn't work with MIS. Also, NIS did not flag it as an issue on reinstall. And, finally, NIS still froze after I did a complete removal of all Norton product and reinstalled only NIS.
Have you ran chkdsk on this drive / system? Been awhile since XP for me but I do remember there is a way to run a complete check of everything on the disk including confirmation of every sector. It seems your system is freezing on the scan because of the use of temp files by Norton or hitting a sector that has some problems. Anything else different between this system and the others?
Several users, including myself, have reported that the Norton Insight background task is causing their system to freeze (see one of these posts here). Unfortunately, I still haven't seen a solution posted for this problem.
Note the date/time the next time your computer freezes, and as soon as your PC is working again you can check to see if this date/time corresponds with the last known run time of the Norton Insight background task (click the "Norton Tasks" link on the main NIS 2010 Window to display the last known run time of all the different background tasks). This may help you to narrow down the exact background task that's causing the problem.
I'm beginning to suspect that the Norton Insight background task is simultaneously causing my Windows Search Indexing to go into overdrive and overwhelm my system resources, but I'm not certain that this is the case.
CHKDSK reports no errors. One of th eother systems is also a desktop, the others are laptops. All running Windows XP SP3. They were all ok until my main system developed the issue.
As to logging the time, the system freezes so there isn't anything in any log file that I have found yet. Any leads on where to look would be appreciated. However, I have taken it off the impacyed system for now hoping to see some word of a cure. I would hate to put it back a third time and go through the freezes all over again.