NIS 2012 Upgrade problem from trial version to licensed product. Windows Device Manager empty

Hello

 

I had a trail version of NIS 2012 running on my windows 7 home premium laptop. I have now loaded a licensed version of NIS2012 onto the same laptop.

 

The install of the licensed product uninstalled the trail version and then successfully loaded the license version which appears to be working okay. However I have noticed that windows device manager is now completely blank (its not showing any devices at all)

 

Can anybody help, thanks in advance.

Mark,

 

Is this what you see:

 

capture_05112012_175848.jpg

 

 

If so I think Yank is referring to the [+]

 

which shoujld then give you our equivalent to:

 

capture_05112012_175858.jpg

 

If that's not the problem could you also tell us what version of Windows you are using ....

No Hugh - if ya got Win 7 like I do I am referring to an arrow - like so:  :smileywink:

 

device mgr.PNG

 

Sorry, I have forgotten everything I knew about XP  - if that is what you are using!

device manager empty.png

 

This is what I see, no devices at all. My operating system is windows 7

Yank,

 

I am using Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit fully updated today .....

 

Sorry about that. Not that it matters in that both are icons for expand this and it's the same screen.

 

We will have to see what the OP sees and where.

 

I'll be booting into 64 bit shortly (and XP) to run the Windows Updates so I'll check.

I have exactly the same problem plus I have lost all my network connections.

 

NIS 2012 stopped running for some unknown reason, so I downloaded a fresh copy from the web site  and installed it. After rebooting the PC NIS was working fine but all my network connections had vanished. In addition when I looked in the device manager the screen was completely blank.

I am running XP with SP3 for several years and have never had these problems before. I have tried all the Microsoft fixes to no avail.

This is definitely a problem caused by installing a fresh copy of NIS.

 

Help please.

 

Mike

Hello

 

I had a trail version of NIS 2012 running on my windows 7 home premium laptop. I have now loaded a licensed version of NIS2012 onto the same laptop.

 

The install of the licensed product uninstalled the trail version and then successfully loaded the license version which appears to be working okay. However I have noticed that windows device manager is now completely blank (its not showing any devices at all)

 

Can anybody help, thanks in advance.

Click the start button.  Depending on what version of Windows you are using, type: services.msc into the search or run bar.

Verify the service "Plug and Play" is running and set to automatic.

 

Dave

Finally solved the problem on my PC after three days.

 

The new installation of NIS 2012 must have changed the permissions in the registery. Once I reset these the device manager came back to life - and after rebooting I had all my network connections again.

The only thing I had to change was the final step (see below) to tick "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects" and OK it.

 

Edit the registry permissions

1.  click on Start, then Run, and type in REGEDT32. Click on the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINEwindow or expand that hive and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum

Now right-click on Enum and choose Permissions. If the Group or user names list box is empty, then you know this is the problem! It should have two names in there, System and Everyone.

Click the Add button and type in Everyone and click OK. Check the Allow box next to Read for Everyone. Now click Add again and type in System. Check the Allow box next to Read and Full Control for System. It should look like this:

enum registry permissions

Both the check boxes under Allow should be selected when you highlight System. Also be sure to click on the Advanced button after adding both users and selecting Reset permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects.

replace permissions on child objects

 

THIS LAST TICK WAS THE STEP I HAD TO DO.

 

Click OK and if a warning message comes up, just click OK. Close the Registry Editor and restart your computer. You should now be able to see everything in the Device Manager.

 

 

 

See:-

http://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-xp-tips/device-manager-empty-or-blank/

 

Good luck to everyone else with a similar problem.

 

Mike

Thanks for the suggestion - been there done that to no avail, and all the other microsoft fixes.

 

Finally solved the problem, see my previous post regarding registery permissions. Somehow NIS 2012 has changed these during the reinstallation which is very worrying.

I will watch these pages to see how seriously Symantec take this problem as I haven't been impressed with their poor Customer Focus over the last year or so. For example Identity Safe had been plauged with numerous compatibility issues causing users mega problems without any satisfactory fixes

 

Regards

 

Mike

Mike, thanks so much for the feedback.

Glad you got it figured out Mike.

 

I take it that like Mark in the first post, your system came preloaded with windows and some other programs and trials?

(An OEM pre-installation rather than a version of windows you installed from scratch).

 

Dave

 

No I built my own PC and loaded all the software myself.

 

I am running XP SP3 on a Gigabit GA-M52L-S3 motherboard with an AMD phenom quad core processor and 4Gb of RAM.

 

The PC has been running trouble free for several years. In December I upgraded from NIS 2011 to NIS 2012 as part of the annual renewal. After 5 months (Sunday evening last) NIS just failed to run. All the files appeared to be in place but it just wouldn't run.

So I downloaded a new version of NIS from Symantic.com, uninstalled the original version and installed the new one. After rebooting the PC, NIS 2012 was running fine but all the network connections had disappeared and the device manager was completely empty.

Clearly the problem was caused by reinstalling NIS 2012 and should never have happened.

 

Mike

Thanks for explaining that.  I was curious because almost every time I see registry permission problems it's with an OEM pre-installation and always thought it was from them improperly copying everything to the "all users" folder before running sysprep.

Since sysprep removes the temporary user profile if everything wasn't done correctly it can mess up some of the resgistry permissions when that temp user is removed.

 

But your absolutly right, in your case it should never have happened.

Through the public beta and the release of the 2012 versions I went though numerous installations using XP and although I never encountered the problem you did, I did notice on a couple systems NIS seemed to reset my NIC settings and I couldn't get online until I cycled my router off and on again and that seems very close to your second issue.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer that question, I'll do a few more tests when I have some spare time.

Dave

 


DaveH wrote:

Thanks for explaining that.  I was curious because almost every time I see registry permission problems it's with an OEM pre-installation and always thought it was from them improperly copying everything to the "all users" folder before running sysprep.

Since sysprep removes the temporary user profile if everything wasn't done correctly it can mess up some of the registry permissions when that temp user is removed.

 

But your absolutely right, in your case it should never have happened.

Through the public beta and the release of the 2012 versions I went though numerous installations using XP and although I never encountered the problem you did, I did notice on a couple systems NIS seemed to reset my NIC settings and I couldn't get online until I cycled my router off and on again and that seems very close to your second issue.

 

Thanks for taking the time to answer that question, I'll do a few more tests when I have some spare time.

Dave

 



 

Hi, Dave.  According to my own investigations, there should be a third user in the Permissions for that key and its subkeys.

 

The "Everyone" user is correct as originally configured.

 

There should be an "Administrators" group - which has both read and write permissions enabled - with that permission-set propagated to all subkeys in that hive subset.

 

 

 

I suggest that Mikejayuk reset his permissions as per the default Windows layout.  His current registry permissions are not secure - which is why Microsoft arranged the original permission structure as it is installed during a standard Windows installation.

 

Furthermore, I am not 100% certain that Mikejayuk's original procedures were correct - when it came to running the Trial version and then updating over top of that to the Purchased version.

 

As those familiar with the forums are aware - all that is necessary to convert a Trial version of a Norton product into its Registered version is to install the Product Key from the purchase into the Trial version running on the machine.

 

However, if the running version of the Trial has been upgraded to a later version of the Engine - the installer on the Purchased version (which is older than the installer on the upgraded Trial, especially if the purchase is on a CD) will not have the "smarts" embedded in the newer installer used for installing the Trial and its updated Engine.  As a result - all sorts of "weirdness" can occur as the two different instruction sets (one for the installer from the Trial and its updated Engine, one from the installer for the Purchased version) compete for control of the NIS installation as it currently exists on the machine.

 

Note: The results of "time travel" produce known paradoxes - in more than just Science Fiction   :smileywink:

 

 

As a result of the above, another solution pathway might have been to perform the standard procedure of Uninstall, NRT, Reinstall and Live Update - which would have put NIS back on a normal trajectory as far as moving from an "empty" NIS installation - forward in time to the current Engine/Definition-set through Live Update.

 

 

 

A possible suggestion for Product Development:  When a later version of an Engine install is detected by a NIS installer as already existing on the target machine - a warning popup is displayed recommending that the user install their Product Key into the existing version of the Product already in place on their machine.  This would avoid the "time travel paradox" - as I suspect was experienced by Mikejayuk.

 

 

Hope this helps.

 

I agree with all that you have said about the correct procedure for installing the latest version. However please do not lose sight of the facts.

In this case I was forced into my actions because the existing installation of NIS2012 had become totally unresponsive. It wouldnt run or respond to the uninstall - don't ask me why.

 

Mike


twixt wrote:

 

Hi, Dave.  According to my own investigations, there should be a third user in the Permissions for that key and its subkeys.

 

The "Everyone" user is correct as originally configured.

 

There should be an "Administrators" group - which has both read and write permissions enabled - with that permission-set propagated to all subkeys in that hive subset.

 


 

My XP system does not have the "Admin" group listed.

It is just like the screenshot on the previous page "Everyone" has read permission and "SYSTEM" has full control and read.

 

Dave

RE:

Hi, Dave.  According to my own investigations, there should be a third user in the Permissions for that key and its subkeys.

 

The "Everyone" user is correct as originally configured.

 

There should be an "Administrators" group - which has both read and write permissions enabled - with that permission-set propagated to all subkeys in that hive subset.

 

 

 

I suggest that Mikejayuk reset his permissions as per the default Windows layout.  His current registry permissions are not secure - which is why Microsoft arranged the original permission structure as it is installed during a standard Windows installation.

 

 

I know that I had more accounts listed than in the original post. However as all the users had admin rights I wasn't unduely worried. However, if there is a security risk I would like to tidy it up properly. Where do I get the correct settings to use. As you can see from the previous post we seem to have conflicting information.

 

Regards

 

Mike

The first post here is from a Microsoft employee.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-hardware/device-manager-is-blank/51a16b23-d188-4501-91c0-0a257a643e4b

 

Note that no mention is made of the Admin group.

"System" has an even higher acess level than Administrator,  How could it possibly be a security risk having less groups with write permission?

 

The opposite is the truth, the more people able to change something is a larger risk, especially when most users are Administrators when they don't need to be.

 

Dave


DaveH wrote:

The first post here is from a Microsoft employee.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_xp-hardware/device-manager-is-blank/51a16b23-d188-4501-91c0-0a257a643e4b

 

Note that no mention is made of the Admin group.

"System" has an even higher access level than Administrator,  How could it possibly be a security risk having less groups with write permission?

 

The opposite is the truth, the more people able to change something is a larger risk, especially when most users are Administrators when they don't need to be.

 

Dave



 

Hi, Dave.  The "System" context is a completely different Security context - it is used for interprocess communications for Windows itself.  The whole idea behind having a "System" context is to ensure that programs can make alterations to the Registry - even if Users do not have those permissions.

 

"User" contexts such as "Everyone", "Administrators" and individual "Usernames" are the interactive contexts that allow users to interact with programs.  The Device Manager that we use and see is an interactive context.  Thus, it is necessary for Enum to have some way to interact with a User to get read/write permissions - which allows that User (or group) to see (modify) the Registry.  This is the only way Windows will allow Users to be able to see and modify the items in Device Manager.

 

Note: If the "System" context did not allow Windows to "talk to itself" - Windows could not even boot. 

 

 

In the various interactive contexts for Windows XP Pro -  a standard "restricted access user" (IOW a user who is not an Administrator) should not be able to modify the Hardware Tree in Device Manager.  Thus, the Security Permissions for the "Enum" key and its subkeys for the "Everyone" group is read-only.

 

In the various interactive contexts for Windows XP Pro - any "Administrator" (IOW, any user who is a member of the "Administrator" group) should be allowed to modify the Hardware Tree in Device Manager.  Thus, the Security Permissions for the "Enum" key and its subkeys for the "Administrator" group is read/write.

 

 

Further down in the discussion referenced from your previous post - regarding the problem-resolution-technique mentioned by "Jason-H." at answers.microsoft.com - are several mentions of other users who had the "Administrator" group showing in their permissions for the "Enum" Registry Key.  Thus, it is correct in some circumstances for the system to be set up in that manner.

 

I suspect that differences in Registry structure and the Security Permissions of the "System" user - which vary between Home and Pro versions of Windows XP - may explain the discrepancy.  The details I mentioned in my previous post on this subject were in regards to Windows XP Pro - which has the option for having multiple active Administrator accounts in Normal mode.  Windows XP Home has only one Administrator account - which can only be accessed from Safe Mode.

 

With the above caveats in mind - it would make sense for the Microsoft Employee's recommendation regarding Enum permissions to be accurate (but incomplete) for Windows XP Pro versions - otherwise it would not be possible for standard Windows Administrator users under XP Pro to be able to see and modify the items in Device Manager.  Furthermore, my recommendations regarding Enum permissions are thus accurate for Windows XP Pro versions - where multiple Administrator Accounts are possible while XP is running in Normal mode.

 

 

It completely slipped my mind that Windows XP has two different "System" security contexts for Normal Mode - depending upon whether the user has Windows XP Home or Windows XP Pro installed.  As noted in further posts in that thread at answers.microsoft.com -  there are other security contexts in Windows 7 that make proper security for this key even more complex in the W7 environment and its various "flavours". 

 

 

 

I stand by my recommendations for the Security Permissions structure for the "Enum" key and its subkeys - as far as Windows XP Pro is concerned.

 

If someone using Windows XP Home could verify that the standard set of Security Permissions found in the "Enum" key for Windows XP Home - is as detailed in the post on answers.microsoft.com - that should provide the remaining needed piece of the puzzle.  Thus, in future, all of us can give an accurate answer for both sets of Security contexts - at least as far as WXP is concerned.

 

 

Hope this helps.