I experienced the same problem. It continued until I uninstalled NIS 2011 and installed NIS 2012 Beta. The problem was resolved but after 2-3 days, NIS 2012 started behaving strangely with LiveUpdate failing to complete whenever I would run it. (Automatic pulse updates were being received; only manual updates failed.) A Norton tech took control of my computer but could not fix it. Then yesterday when I went to use it, I discovered that ALL OF MY EXE FILES ARE MISSING. GONE! DELETED! NOTHING! ZIP! Microsoft Office Professional ... gone! Windows Mail ... gone! Internet Explorer ... gone! The only program left standing is Google Chrome. For the rest of you out there who are experiencing "minor" glitches with Norton, I can only suggest that you back up your important data ASAP ... before this happens to you!
I've now been all over the internet researching this issue, and it appears there is a very bad virus or trojan out there that has caused this, even though NIS 2011 had been running fine and updates and scans were done almost daily. Now it looks like I will have to reformat and restore my 4 year old Vista notebook back to its original settings and literally start from scratch!
If anyone has experienced this and knows a better solution, please let me know. Reformatting is a last resort and not something I really want to go through. Please help.
I experienced the same problem. It continued until I uninstalled NIS 2011 and installed NIS 2012 Beta. The problem was resolved but after 2-3 days, NIS 2012 started behaving strangely with LiveUpdate failing to complete whenever I would run it. (Automatic pulse updates were being received; only manual updates failed.) A Norton tech took control of my computer but could not fix it. Then yesterday when I went to use it, I discovered that ALL OF MY EXE FILES ARE MISSING. GONE! DELETED! NOTHING! ZIP! Microsoft Office Professional ... gone! Windows Mail ... gone! Internet Explorer ... gone! The only program left standing is Google Chrome. For the rest of you out there who are experiencing "minor" glitches with Norton, I can only suggest that you back up your important data ASAP ... before this happens to you!
Hi rdy423,
Welcome to the Norton Community.
I am asking the moderator to split this into its own thread for better visibility. It is not recommended to install a BETA product (NIS 2012) on a production computer but it is also unlikely that it caused the kind of problems you are describing.
When you say these programs are gone are you saying the executables for the programs cannot be found, that some error occurs when you try to run them or what? Please be more specific.
I would also recommend that you look into using an imaging backup program like Norton Ghost or another of your choice as it is the absolute best way to ensure you can recover from a disaster easily.
Every .exe program I ever installed on my Fujitsu notebook disappeared. In fact, my C:\Program Files folder was empty except for Google Chrome! The really bad news is that I spent the past weekend reformatting and re-imaged the computer (per Fujitsu's recommendation) back to it's original factory settings, and then started restoring things to the way they were. The first thing I did was remove NIS 2007 that came with the system, and I installed NIS 2011 instead. The first time I went to use it, I opened the Network Security Map page and clicked on a listed device and NIS 2011 did the same thing!!! NIS 2011 crashed again with the same error message I received before I reformated and re-imaged!!! Needless to say, I'm frustrated as hell and don't want to put any more time into this notebook if the problem is Norton related and not yet resolved. Please help.
Thanks for the update and sorry that you are having so much trouble.
The Program Files directory is empty?? And this happened again? I don't see any way that NIS can cause this. I've been on the forums here for a long time and nothing this catapstrophic has ever been reported.
What did you have present in Program Files before that, after reinstalling Windows, etc?
What happens if you try to bring up IE? If it does not come up, what error message do you receive? If you cannot fire up IE, bring up Chrome and try to navigate to sites such as "security.symantec.com", "mcaffee.com", etc. Does this work? Are there any other strange sympoms on your computer?
I am not qualified on things like rootkit removal but I do know it is possible for some infections like this to survive a format and still be active. So please let us know of any other unusual symptoms you might be having.
Also, just to make sure your hard drive is OK, please bring up a command prompt via Start menu > Accessories > Command prompt. Then right click and click on "Run as Administrator". In the Command window type in "chkdsk :c /r" and hit Return. Windows will inform you that it needs to restart the computer to do the chkdsk. Answer yes and reboot the computer.
If you don't catch the on screen message following chkdsk, then you can check Windows event log afterwards and see if any errors were found.
Note if any errors are found and/or corrected.
As a precaution, I would recommend visiting one of the free malware removal sites below and ask them to help check your computer for possible infections.