Norton 360, v 24.12.9725
Windows
In the Settings/Troubleshooting tab, “Reset all settings” says, “This action cannot be undone, so back up any custom settings you’d like to keep first.”
Where is the referred-to function to back up custom settings?
Where is the Backup Settings option?
Hello @Ardmore
I’ve not found “back up custom or any settings” function.
I imagine “back up settings” is from Avast.
https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/backup-antivirus-settings/#pc
Since Norton unfortunately (IMHO) went to an Avast-based product, it would be a welcome addition if they could add settings backup capability. (Despite my 5-device license, I’ve had to remove it from one of my pc’s because of extremely serious problems that could not be remedied. I thought everything seemed fixed after a clean Norton remove and reinstall following a System Restore from Safe Mode to pre-v24, but upon reboot, I was once again presented with messages such as those pictured, and a completely non-functional machine except in Safe Mode.)
Hello! I wanted to ask you, did the problem/those error messages you illustrate 1st show up/occur as a result of you being on version v24? Or was it only after you returned back to pre-v24? I ask, because last week Friday, my WIN 7 PC using v24 totally froze while just web browsing and listening to music from WMP (nothing heavy-duty). I pressed the RESET on my case as no Task Manager could come up to break out of it/no mouse movement. When it rebooted (I skipped the choices to boot into SAFE MODE, etc.) I chose to start Windows normally. It ended up going into ‘preparing your desktop’ and I had then those same exact pop-up dialog boxes appear as well as the Sys Tray message you posted. So I also ended up with a machine totally non-functional-couldn’t even run Windows Explorer. I returned to a working PC by restoring from a image backup I had and ended up going back to Norton v22.24.2.6 as well (which was on my image) and is now running fine. My rig is still running WIN 7 (still being patched by ZERO PATCH) as stated earlier and I’m sure is much older than your rig (yes?) and is so my situation is somewhat different as to why I had this problem and may be a factor in my circumstance. I’m just attempting to make a determination if Norton v24 is really the culprit/instigator as it may be been doing something behind-the-scenes without my knowledge at that particular time. Any further light you can shed would be most welcome. Thank you.
Ted
TLDR: Norton 360 v24 was definitely the culprit on the pc that those pics are from. v24 was working OK on that machine for awhile except that on two occasions my desktop would not come up without a reboot. (A pretty big exception, if you ask me…) Awhile after that it progressed to the far-worse mess pictured. A possible connection between our situations is use of 0patch on the affected machines, although I only use the free patches at present. I haven’t encountered any serious problems with v24 on my other Win7 machine.
Hi Ted. First, some background: I have 2 Win7 SP1 Pro machines, both bought new in Feb, 2014. One is a Dell Inspiron which I use very little these days. The other is a Lenovo W530 which I still use use a lot. Both are fully patched. I have always used some form of extended-support (NON-0patch) patching on the Lenovo, and have also done so on the Dell for about the last year. Before that I did use 0patch with the Dell, for at least a year – and still leave the 0patch User Agent running for limited micro-patching. I’m not going to look at my records for the exact dates at the moment, but given your use of 0patch it is indeed curious that the computer the above screenshots are from is the one that still has a reduced service level of 0patch running on it, namely the Dell.
My first experience with v24 of Norton 360 was with the Dell. Since that pc isn’t too important to me, I decided to Live-Update it to v24 a few months ago to use as the “guinea pig” machine, and to get familiar with v24. I don’t recall all the details, but after doing one of the Live Updates and the required reboot, the familiar Win 7 Pro white-on-blue screen was appearing for an unusually long time, and was presenting “preparing your experience” type messages, as if I was installing or re-installing the OS. I think it was messages about preparing my desktop that got me especially concerned. (Wish I recalled the full details, but I don’t.) Then when the “desktop” came up, it was black except for a recyle bin. (I think there was also briefly a small box in the upper-left flashing messages). But at this point I did not have any of the particularly ominous user-related messages shown above. At that point I rebooted the Dell, and my actual desktop came up fairly quickly, along with Norton 360 v24.
3 or 4 subsequent boots of the Dell were fine, and then I encountered another one exactly like what I described above in this post. And again a reboot fixed it. But a couple boots later, I ended up with what looked like it was going to take me to that now-familiar situation where I’d need to simply reboot to get my desktop back. But instead, I got those ominous messages in the screenshot, and a fully non-functional machine with a black desktop. There was a barebones start menu, but it was non-functional, with no access to any of the programs it listed, nor to Windows Explorer (for file access). I couldn’t even open a Command box. Since I hadn’t backed up this machine in quite awhile – but fortunately had a lot of restore points (which Win 10 and 11 never seem to save more than a month, tops) I was able to use Safe Mode and System Restore to get the Dell back to a functional state.
I then decided to use the Norton Remove and Reinstall tool to try a clean reinstall of v24. Everything seemed to go smoothly. I went through and re-did all the 360 v24 settings. But then I rebooted, and bam, back to the ominous mess pictured above. I again System Restored from Safe Mode, and promptly removed Norton from that machine and replaced it with BitDefender free AV.
For comparison, the Win 7 Lenovo got v24 pushed to it on December 31, 2024. While it’s been quite buggy, over-aggressive, and – well, strange and sometimes frustrating – in numerous ways, it certainly hasn’t “hosed” the Lenovo as it did the Dell. In fact, I haven’t detected had any serious system issues, or noticeable slowdowns or freezes with v24 on the Lenovo.
Yet it was clearly Norton 360 v24 that hosed the Dell. The Dell is working fine with BitDefender. Perhaps 360 v24 has a serious conflict with 0patch – despite how lightweight 0patch is – or some other app or aspect of OS configuration that my Dell and your machine share. But since v24 seems to largely mirror co-owned Avast from what I can gather, you’d think an issue this serious would already been known
Sorry, I probably made this a lot wordier than necessary – hope it helps.
Ardmore
Hi Ardmore,
Thank you very much for this detailed reply. Yes, I can see that this will most certainly help. Let me read this more in detail/digest it as I was at work today and couldn’t spend the time I require to take this in. At first glance, it has a ton of good info. Once I read it all uninterrupted and see how it applied to my past situation, I’ll reply back with my comments/final thoughts over the weekend.
Best - Ted
Hi Ardmore. Here is my background on this topic. I have a single PC (Falcon-Northwest) with WIN7 PRO SP1 from September 2010. Fully-patched/also purchased 3-year extension worth of WIN7 patches from Microsoft (that ended in 2023). After that, I purchased 0Patch on yearly basis and User Agent is always running in Sys Tray. Yes, it is old, but it runs fine/very little trouble (thankful). Got me thru the pandemic when working from home. Get once-in-awhile a BSOD due to video card, I can’t recall last when the PC totally ‘locked up’ - but in either case, pressing RESET button got me back to square one.
My upgrade to Norton 360 v24 was around end of October 2024 and didn’t have any major issues (nothing like that you experienced)…it did return to desktop fine in timely manner (there most likely was another reboot performed manually by me) - I would have certainly recalled being stressed if that wasn’t the case. After that, I didn’t get any trouble as others have experienced-just some minor annoyances. I certainly am not happy what this 24 version turned into-that is for sure. Since that upgrade, I have been monitoring the Community board daily just to stay informed on what the issues are to possibly avoid them myself.
I leave the PC in ‘sleep’ mode when I am at work and ‘wake’ it upon my return. No problems there. PC reboots are done when I go over a week of continual runtime (which takes some time to reach that threshold since my PC usage is fragmented Mon-Fri, only highly used on weekends).
On that Friday when my PC froze and I hit reset, I should have chosen ‘SAFE MODE’ from the onset and attempted a restore of a recent restore point right-then-and-there (instead of choosing Start Windows Normally option). Recalling from memory…I tried to do an Active Directory Repair from MSCONFIG via Boot into Safe Mode with Command Prompt-that only eliminated one of the error messages but was still in a no-joy situation. I next attempted to restore one of those System Restore points (had many recent sets of those) via a boot off of my WIN7 Rescue DVD, but it didn’t fix it. I did manage to get into just plain SAFE MODE mode to see what I would get and there was my normal desktop, all the icons, working Explorer, drives, etc. Was good to see that, so at least I know my profile was still intact in that form. I just couldn’t take all the time to eliminate via MSCONFIG tabs what was the culprit (probably should have started with NORTON 360 as the first thing).
As I mentioned in the end, I had to end up doing a restore using an image backup (I use TERABYTE IMAGE FOR LINUX software) from March 2024 (I decided not to do further Image backups since I don’t install much software anymore). I didn’t lose anything going to that backup.
I understand your problem surfaced once the device was rebooted and after that, mine totally came out of nowhere…just doing some web browsing (and I had some reboots in the interim since the upgrade not experiencing at all what you had). I agree with your assessment. Maybe 0Patch did something to ‘step on’ Norton v24 while running and it didn’t like it? I wish I had looked at the list of 0patches being used after upgrading to v24, I don’t know if any Norton v24 patches were released. Or this was because we are running WIN7 which has been out of support since 2020. I certainly agree, all this is a result of Norton 360 v24 being the instigator. What a shame the software has come to this.
I just hope I don’t see this problem or something else with WIN11. I do have a new laptop (just 1 1/2 years old) running WIN11 and it is on NORTON 360 v24…so far so good. I am only running it a couple times a month-to get the monthly MS updates installed/using it for websites I can’t get to work on WIN7/as a backup in case my PC dies altogether. My plan is to get a new PC in the coming months with WIN11 and take the WIN7 box off the internet (if is still works by then). If this NORTON version isn’t straightened out, I’ll have to go with something else for sure.
Comments/questions/future suggestions welcome on any of the above now/in future. Otherwise thank you for exchanging info/thoughts/ideas on this and I hope you future computing is enjoyable/productive/less-stressful.
Ted
Ted-
Thanks for that detailed rundown.
My infrequently used Win 7 Dell is still working happily with BitDefender Free after Norton 360 v 24 hosed it, but I still have Norton 360 v 24 on my more-frequently-used Win 7 Lenovo,
After tweaking 360 v24’s settings (though some desired ones are absent), and getting some initial kinks worked out (including a lot of false positives), it’s actually been mostly less intrusive than v22 on the Lenovo.
Despite our concern that 0Patch may have been – as you said – stepping on 360 v24’s toes (on my Dell and your Falcon-Northwest), four days ago I decided to “hold my breath” and put 0Patch Free on the Lenovo as a diagnostic – and because there’s a possibility I’ll be buying a full 0Patch subscription for it later. Of course I was careful to create an image of the Lenovo first! (As a reminder, 0Patch Free, which provides limited patching, is what I left on the Dell after turning to a different primary solution for monthly patching.)
Well, after 0Patch installed, I rebooted, and thought, “uh oh, why is the Windows logo staying up for so long…like maybe 3-4 minutes?” (I’m talking about the color logo against a black screen.) Then that finally went away, and the welcome screen stayed up longer than usual – but there were no ominous “creating your desktop” type messages this time. But after my desktop came up, looking normal, the computer was as sluggish as could be. I’d try opening, say, Firefox, and get a mostly black screen…though about 30 seconds later it would look normal. Despite this initial “Uh Oh” experience, after about five more minutes everything was running smoothly and at the usual pace. And it’s been that way for four days of heavy use. So that’s a relief and suggests that maybe 0Patch had nothing to do with the “hosing” behavior we encountered, BTW, I noticed that 360’s Firewall quickly created allow rules for 0Patch.
Also see the DM I’m going to send you.
Ardmore
Ardmore,
You are welcome. Glad to hear things are working out with both your WIN7 devices. Mine is still running OK after the restore/downgrade to version 22, but I think I’m coming to conclusion that I will have to take my WIN7 device off-line pretty soon. The latest development is that Norton v22 signature/definitions are not present for download (starting with last night), so I don’t know if that is temporary or permanent (monitoring the post for it). Also too, FIREFOX browser (which I use) support for WIN7 is ending at end of March/early April 2025. Both of those factors are signaling the end-of-the-line as far as me using WIN 7 on the internet this year and beyond. I certainly got my moneys-worth from it and I can’t see spending more time/$ keeping it running. I will reply to your DM separately.
Ted
