Norton 360: When I run Registry Cleaner I get ; "unable to take required System Restore Point, error: 2

Greetings,

 

I just ran into the same problem and all of the suggested fixes failed! Here's the error message that I receive every time I try to run the Norton 360 Registry Cleaner (version 20.4.0.40):

 

       Unable to take required System Restore point, error: -2146959355

 

In my case, there was plenty of room on my hard drive and plenty of unused capacity allocated to create a restore point. I manually created a restore point to prove that it worked. I even turned off System Restore and rebooted. Norton's Registry Cleaner still failed, giving the identical error message.

 

The last time I used the Norton Registry Cleaner was about 10 days ago and had no trouble with it. My computer is running Windows 7 64-bit w/ SP1 and all updates. My guess is that a recent security update from either Microsoft or Symantec has broken the Norton Registry Cleaner on Windows 7 64-bit systems.

 

Since this is a feature that is not used very often by most Norton 360 users, it may not be reported very often. But the problem truly exists.

 

I'd like to know why the problem persists when the System Restore feature is completely disabled! In this case the Registry Cleaner should not be trying to "take a System Restore point". Something is obviously wrong with the Registry Cleaner!!!

 

Please help.

 

Kind regards,

 

David

Hi Yank,

 

I talked to Norton 360 support and they also said I was not using the current version. I find this very strange since I've had a subscription for many years and, in the past, the current version would automatically be pushed to my computer. In fact, I'm certain that I've received Norton 360 updates in excess of 100 MB this year (and I think I remember one that was close to 200 MB) so I assumed that I had the latest version.

 

I manually initiated an update via Support > New Version Check in Norton 360, itself, and installed 21.1.0.18 and all subsequent minor patches and updates with LiveUpdate. The result: The problem persists with 21.1.0.18. Same error message. The Norton 360 Registry Cleaner will not run (it did as recently as 10 days ago).

 

I appreciate your thoughts but I respectfully disagree with all but one point: I agree that it would be better if the Registry Cleaner offered an "expert" mode that allowed the advanced user to hand pick which changes to allow. As for the disagreements ...

 

1 - I've been using Norton 360 on a variety of computers for many years. Several of them have had the Windows Recovery Point service disabled and I've never had any trouble using the Registry Cleaner in Norton 360 before now. There are some very sound reasons for disabling the Windows Recovery Point system for expert users (I would never recommend it to novices). The chief being performance and avoidance of interruption of mission-critical processes. My idea of a good "restore point" is a clone of the entire partition which I use Norton Ghost to create. I've never liked Microsoft's solution because it often spawns orphans from subsequently installed programs.

 

2 - My experience with Norton products is unbroken back to the late 1980's, I believe (when Peter Norton still owned his company). To give you an idea how long I've been at this: I recovered the entire contents of a 30 MB hard drive sector by sector using Norton Disk Doctor back when 30 MB was the largest hard drive for a personal computer (an IBM AT class PC). Imagine trying to do that today on a 3 TB drive! And I've used a variety of registry "cleaners" or "repairers" before the Norton/Symantec version was introduced. In case you're unaware, it was originally a tool in the Norton Utilities/System Works before its user interface was dumbed down and folded into Norton 360. I used it for many years. So I've had a lot of experience with Norton's approach to registry cleaning and I'm satisfied with its performance sufficiently to use it even in its dumbed down form (it is possible to inspect the changes it made and manually undo them, if necessary—but I have never needed to do this). I have not had a bad experience on any of the computers which I manage.

 

Back to the original problem: It still exists and its error message does not seem to fit the facts. As I reported in my original post, the problem started on a Win 7 system with a fully functioning (and tested!) Windows Restore Point system. It had plenty of available storage capacity allocated to it. Something has damaged the Registry Cleaner on my system.

 

Kind regards,

 

David

Greetings,

 

I just ran into the same problem and all of the suggested fixes failed! Here's the error message that I receive every time I try to run the Norton 360 Registry Cleaner (version 20.4.0.40):

 

       Unable to take required System Restore point, error: -2146959355

 

In my case, there was plenty of room on my hard drive and plenty of unused capacity allocated to create a restore point. I manually created a restore point to prove that it worked. I even turned off System Restore and rebooted. Norton's Registry Cleaner still failed, giving the identical error message.

 

The last time I used the Norton Registry Cleaner was about 10 days ago and had no trouble with it. My computer is running Windows 7 64-bit w/ SP1 and all updates. My guess is that a recent security update from either Microsoft or Symantec has broken the Norton Registry Cleaner on Windows 7 64-bit systems.

 

Since this is a feature that is not used very often by most Norton 360 users, it may not be reported very often. But the problem truly exists.

 

I'd like to know why the problem persists when the System Restore feature is completely disabled! In this case the Registry Cleaner should not be trying to "take a System Restore point". Something is obviously wrong with the Registry Cleaner!!!

 

Please help.

 

Kind regards,

 

David

Hi David_HO1,

 

I am not going to debate the use of System Restore, nor will I debate the worthfulness of registry cleaners useage on a regular basis - neither is why I volunteer my time.  I do remember Disk Doctor and Norton Utilites/System Works.  I used System Works - for a short while and can't rememeber why I quit using it.  Let me just say that as Norton changed, it's options changed, as did System Restore and it's function.  There is still conflict with Norton Tamper Prootection and running System Restore on some systems and usually the defintions end up outdated.  I muust agree nothing beats a recent clone, recent being the key.  As long as you are happy with using a registry cleaner - fine that's your choice on your system.

 

I am not surprised that you have the same situation after the upgrade - after all if you install an upgrade over top of a program that is not functioning 100%, chances are that the upgrade will not fix the orginial problem.

 

My suggestion would have been, and still is, to remove N 360 via Control Panel (using the do not save settings option), reboot, run the Norton Removal Tool and then install a fresh copy of N 360 version 21.1.0.18 (run LU until current).

 

I'm not saying that will fix your situation 100% , but at least you know you have started with a clean install of N360.

 

I have asked a mod to move your posts and my responses t a thread of it's own, as the OP is using a Comcast version - different from your version and not all options are the same.

 

 

 

 

Hi David,

I have sent you a Private Message (PM.gif) with instructions for collecting logs for our team to investigate further. Please take a look at it when time permits.