Hi,
Have a strange problem at the moment on a laptop running Windows XP & Norton AntiVirus.
It cannot access anything to do with modems, network connections or My Computer (although I can browse drive contents by typing "c:" in Run).
It did this last week & having seen it in the past to do with viruses, I ran Stinger because Norton had been allowed to go out of date (not my laptop, BTW!). It did find Nachi & removed it.
This didn't solve the problem, but I expected that & created a new user, transferred all his files over, setup his Internet connection again & updated Norton. Then deleted the old user. It worked fine.
Well, once! Next day he brought it back with the same problem. He'd been able to use it ok for some time, then rebooted & it failed again. I ran Norton, Stinger & the Nachi removal tool; all came back clean. Tempting fate I repeated what I did before. Got it working, soak tested it, rebooted it a few times & it never failed.
He's brought it back again! Same problem. I've now given up the refresh user route & looked a bit closer: there are three services listed as 'Starting', which are Norton, Telephony & Background Intelligent Transfer.
I've uninstalled Norton which got it working, but a reboot stopped it again. I don't think it was Norton itself that caused it to temporarily recover, but the very act of running the Add/Remove Programs applet. As soon as it started uninstalling, everything leapt into life.
So, has anyone got any ideas as to what's causing this? I've cleaned this machine of every temporary file & unrequired start-up program I can find, but it's not heavily used anyway. It's a basic Windows/Office set-up & email comes via a VPN connection to a mail server at his office, which is the same for about 20 other users who all get the same emails. He only uses a dial-up ISP to enable that connection; the ISP email address isn't even setup.
Any help will be very much appreciated!
Have a strange problem at the moment on a laptop running Windows XP & Norton AntiVirus.
It cannot access anything to do with modems, network connections or My Computer (although I can browse drive contents by typing "c:" in Run).
It did this last week & having seen it in the past to do with viruses, I ran Stinger because Norton had been allowed to go out of date (not my laptop, BTW!). It did find Nachi & removed it.
This didn't solve the problem, but I expected that & created a new user, transferred all his files over, setup his Internet connection again & updated Norton. Then deleted the old user. It worked fine.
Well, once! Next day he brought it back with the same problem. He'd been able to use it ok for some time, then rebooted & it failed again. I ran Norton, Stinger & the Nachi removal tool; all came back clean. Tempting fate I repeated what I did before. Got it working, soak tested it, rebooted it a few times & it never failed.
He's brought it back again! Same problem. I've now given up the refresh user route & looked a bit closer: there are three services listed as 'Starting', which are Norton, Telephony & Background Intelligent Transfer.
I've uninstalled Norton which got it working, but a reboot stopped it again. I don't think it was Norton itself that caused it to temporarily recover, but the very act of running the Add/Remove Programs applet. As soon as it started uninstalling, everything leapt into life.
So, has anyone got any ideas as to what's causing this? I've cleaned this machine of every temporary file & unrequired start-up program I can find, but it's not heavily used anyway. It's a basic Windows/Office set-up & email comes via a VPN connection to a mail server at his office, which is the same for about 20 other users who all get the same emails. He only uses a dial-up ISP to enable that connection; the ISP email address isn't even setup.
Any help will be very much appreciated!
