Products:
Norton Internet Security 12
Firefox 8
IE - newest
My text editor (Crimsom Editor) starts regardless of which help link I select (click), . I'm sure this will happen with any text editor I use; such as Notepad.
I was unable to click a help link in NIS to get to the NIS help center. I navigated to this site through the web instead.
Hi,
Welcome to Norton Community. Please go through the instructions and install the WinHlp32.exe and try to access the Help contents.
Huh? Follow what instructions?
Oops IE malfunction sorry. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/917607
I did some research and found the link you recommend. The flaw in this logic is that winhlp32.exe was not part of the design environment for NIS 2012 and is even native to Vista.
I'm going to explore the registry for corrupt entries.
Windows has that "Always use this application to open this kind of file setting" so if you can find the extension of the HELP File, or if someone kind tell you what it is, in Norton then find that file, right mouse click on it with the SHIFT key held down and you should be able to see a list of programs (you may have to click on Other) to find the program that opens the Norton HELP file and change it so that Norton opens it.
Or there may be a setting in your text editor where the files it is to open are listed and you could find the Norton file extension there and uncheck it.
That's what I'd be looking for with the programs I know about.
But if you are happy looking for the setting in the registry, fine but make a backup of the registry first.
I think your text editor is also a HTML editor.
Open your editor and go into the program settings and remove the association for HTML.
Dave
Reinstall of the product (pretty much a last choice) didn't work. The problem returned.
Uninstall of the text editor worked. Grrr
Reinstalling would not necessarily cancel any "false" association.
Removing the application would stop it opening the help file <g>
I don't know enough about the registry but for example I have Irfanview set to open all image files by default and the registry entry for this is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\IrfanView\Capabilities\FileAssociations and then a list of file extensions.
while
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Capabilities\FileAssociations has a list that includes html against which it says IE.AssocFile.HTM
which I would take as being it's way of saying to open an html file using an instruction in IE concerning file associations.
In other words I believe you need to get to association broken between the help file extension and your text editor.
You might find it enough to uninstall your text editor and then run CCleaner on the registry since that often picks up things in the registry where an application is no longer there. Delete that line and then reinstall your text editor watching very carefully for any step in the installation where it may ask "Do you always want such and such to be opened by ...."?
I'm pretty sure that was the problem Hugh, HTML files were not being opened in the default browser. They were opening in the editor because the editor had that association.
I have seen a few posts about this same problem concerning the use of Notepad ++.
It's also more than just a text editor, it's a code editor and can be set to open numerous file types.
In the 2012 products, the "help file" is not a local help file anymore. It's an online help file and the Norton interface calls it up by some kind of HTML page instead of using a standard internet shortcut. That HTML command or page, it being intercepted and opened by some HTML editors instead of the default browser opening like it would if a standard shortcut was called.
The problem also seems to be happening with the program links for Norton account, and "new version check".
I haven't spent too much tie with it but I haven't been able to replicate it yet to see if the problem is the editors or how the 2012 products call those pages up. But I been using the latest 360 beta, I don't have any released versions of 2012 installed yet.
Maybe something is different in the last 360 beta. I also don't know what browsers the people reporting this problem have been using. My first guess would be that it's the editors fault because alot more people than have posted here must have advanced editors installed.
I actually tried this "crimson editor" yesterday and when I had it associated with HTML, I couldn't get the online norton help file to open either. (It's not active yet in the beta anyway). But my browser would open and the page loaded wouldn't work at all.
After I removed the association, IE said that it was no longer the default browser (although it was the only browser installed).
When I reset it as the default browser, eveyrthing started working like it should.
So obviously there was some file association taken from my browser that the Norton product was trying to use to open the browser to the help file.
I took that statement " Uninstall of the text editor worked. Grrr" to mean that the online help file is working now that the editor is uninstalled.
Please correct me if I am mistaken.
Dave
Yup it seems to be a file association issue. Because the Help files will use the hh.exe which is the ' html help ' opener for help files having *.chm as their extension. It lives in the Windows folder and has a limited number of command-line options. HH.EXE is associated with .CHM files. So double-click a *.CHM file and Windows will open the file using HH.EXE. Its a very small file, it mostly passes the help filename onto a HH API library. HH.EXE is not single instance, if you open a CHM file three times using HH.EXE, then three help windows will appear. You can open the hh.exe by typing ' hh ' in Run Box. If you reinstall the text editor change the file association of *.chm files to html help opener (hh.exe)
Yes, I understand that for .chm files. But in the 2012 products it no longer uses .chm files.
In the 2011 versions when you click Support > Help, it opens a .chm help file
But in the 2012 versions when you click Support > Help, it opens a browser to the online help file. It's my understanding there is no longer a local help file.
The same thing happens when you click Support > New Version Check, or "Account". It opens a browser to either your norton account or the website to check for new versions.
Is that not done though some call to a HTML page rather than any kind of .chm file?
It seems to me that it's opening the browser though a HTML page rather than a standard browser shortcut, maybe to try to be compatable with more browser types?
Dave
Yes in NIS12 it will call the default Browser to open the page requested from NIS12. We could have checked it by changing the Default Browser (I am having N360 in my machine ). if the text editor is taking over all the html files then there should be a setting in the editor that can remove the association with the html, htm files. Or we can go to the properties and try to change the File association of the html/htm files.
<< After I removed the association, >>
That's the "how" of which I don't know -- can you say for the benefit of the OP.
It might be enough to use the RESET button in IE .....
Open a webpage in IE and save it as .html and right click goto properties->change->select IE or any other web browser you want so that will open .html files through that browser only.
DO this after installing the text editor.
There are settings in each of those editors where you can remove those file type association. If you don't change that association the editor is going to change it back the next time it is run.
I made this simple page in notebook and saved it with a .html extention. You can right click on the file while holding down the shift key and then select "Open with". Then you can choose your browser and click the box to always use that program.
I can tell just by looking at the file that my association is correct because windows displays it with an icon that looks like iE.
<html> <body><h1>Hello World</h1>
</body>
</html>
Dave
An earlier post discussed .chm files. To my knowledge these are not used. Instead there is a direct call to a .html page. For example, the call within "support" returns "https://www-secure.symantec.com/norton-support/... (much deleted)" and the browser is launched. This is the behavior we want. Now if the .htm or .html file types were not associated with the browser, something else or probably nothing would launch.
What was being launched was "c:/windows/system32https://www-secure....(much deleted)". It's easy to see that NIS wasn't attempting to launch a web page, instead it prepended "c:/windows/system32" to the call. Very odd behavior.
I can only assume that the text editor was being launched because the string pointed to a text/html file. It could have launched any program associated with a text/html extension.
The solution was easy: Uninstall the text editor
uschwarz wrote:What was being launched was "c:/windows/system32https://www-secure....(much deleted)". It's easy to see that NIS wasn't attempting to launch a web page, instead it prepended "c:/windows/system32" to the call. Very odd behavior.
That is because the file association did not point to a browser. Clicking Help should launch your default browser, which then retrives the page. The following screenshot shows Firefox.exe as a child process of ccsvchst.exe when the Help link is clicked in the Norton GUI:
SendOfJive wrote:
uschwarz wrote:What was being launched was "c:/windows/system32https://www-secure....(much deleted)". It's easy to see that NIS wasn't attempting to launch a web page, instead it prepended "c:/windows/system32" to the call. Very odd behavior.
That is because the file association did not point to a browser. Clicking Help should launch your default browser, which then retrieves the page. The following screenshot shows Firefox.exe as a child process of ccsvchst.exe when the Help link is clicked in the Norton GUI:
Hi, SendOfJive. I agree with DaveH, that the text editor is "hijacking" the .htm and/or .html extensions as part of both its install routines and its normal operation. This happens with a bunch of different programs.
For example, If both QuickTime and Windows Media Player are installed, the *.MP3 extension can be played by either program. Which program gets selected will vary depending upon which program has the "hijack" function enabled. If you go and look at the QuickTime Preferences under the File Types tab , one of the options there is to "Notify me if other programs modify these associations". This is QuickTime's way of enforcing its hold on the set of associations marked by default (at first) or modified by the user (if desired).
Similarly, in Windows Media Player, by selecting Tools/Options/File_Types and ticking the desired items, the user can "claw back" associations hijacked by other programs like RealPlayer, various Creative Labs products, various Roxio products, and so on.
However, if any one of the programs installed that manipulates a particular file extension has an "auto clawback" feature - then that program will automatically pull back that file extension to itself whenever it runs or whenever its "enforcer" is run at startup. This is what causes any modification to a particular file extension to "not stick". The problem is especially vexing when a user has 2 or 3 or more programs which all have auto-clawback features. Then what happens is whichever program was run last will take the association, and you will never have peace in the land at all, at all, at all. 
What is necessary to sort this out is to disable auto-clawback in all the programs that have that feature. This usually means deselecting a checkbox in the Options for each particular program. If the user wishes to reliably associate one particular program with a particular file extension - they can enable auto-clawback on one of the associated programs. However, if they want the association to occur with any program that does not have auto-clawback capability, then auto-clawback must be disabled on all the programs that have the ability to associate with that particular file extension.
Note: "Open With" will still allow the user to select whichever program they wish to use for a particular file - by selecting from the list of available options using that feature. This allows full flexibility if the user wants to use something other than the default program selected for that extension. But this does not work for automated situations such as the use of the Default Browser for NIS' Helpfile access.
A similar problem occurs with multiple Internet Browsers. It is necessary to disable auto-clawback in all but one of the Browsers in order to prevent "hunting" between default Browsers.
This is also the case for the difference between Outlook and Outlook Express/Windows Live Mail. There is a similar problem with "hunting" there as well.
twixt wrote:I agree with DaveH, that the text editor is "hijacking" the .htm and/or .html extensions as part of both its install routines and its normal operation.
Hi twixt,
Yes, I thought I was agreeing with DaveH, too. I was responding to the suggestion that Norton is not trying to launch a web page. Norton clearly expects the file to be opened by the default browser.
