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Click on the links below:
How to recover if antispyware breaks your Net connection
Anti-virus program always out of date?
Getting Rid of Norton
Spyware hid my CD Drive!
Norton Again!
Windows Defender fails to initialize
AVG Icon stays black and white
AVG Invalid CTF Control File
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How to recover if antispyware breaks your Net connection
Removal of spyware can wreck a computers' Internet connection. In these cases, spyware files may have insinuated themselves into Winsock.
The Windows firewall works closely with Winsock. It appears that the spyware is insinuating itself into the startup of the firewall. When you remove the files, the Registry can't find them. So, it refuses to start the firewall service.
Repairing Winsock formerly meant going into the Registry. You had to track down the offending keys and delete them. But Windows has a command that will do the job. (XP Service Pack 2 only)
To run the command, click Start, Run. Type “cmd” in the box and click OK. That will put you at a command prompt. Enter “netsh winsock reset” and press Enter.
Close the command window and reboot the computer.
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Anti-virus program always out of date?
My customer was getting messages to say that her anti-virus program definitions were out of date - but she had a broadband connection and the anti-virus updates were set to automatic.
Sure enough, when I checked, she had got the latest updates.
But her PC’s system date was set to 4 months in the future!
So her anti-virus program thought that the latest updates were 4 months old!
Solution: Right click on the time in the bottom right hand corner of the task bar, select Adjust Date/Time and correct the date.
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Getting Rid of Norton
If you want to replace Norton with a different AntiVirus product it is strongly recommended that you delete Norton before trying to install the new product.
Norton rightly used to have the reputation of being very difficult to get rid of, but recent versions are much easier to delete.
First stop all running Norton products - easier said than done, but I suggest you boot into safe mode - then Norton won’t even start.
Next, uninstall all Norton/Symantec products:
1. Click Start and then Control Panel.
2. Click Add or Remove Programs and then click Change or Remove Programs.
3. Select a Norton/Symantec product, Norton AntiVirus for example, and then click Change/Remove.
4. Follow the prompts until the uninstall process indicates that it has successfully removed the product.
5. Repeat these steps until all Norton/Symantec products have been removed from the Add/Remove Programs list.
Next, configure Windows to show all files:
1. Double click the My Computer icon on your desktop.
2. Click the Tools menu in the top toolbar and then click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab.
4. Uncheck the "hide file extensions for known file types".
5. Under the "Hidden files" folder, click "Show hidden files and folders".
6. Click Apply, and then click OK.
Now, search for and delete all Norton/Symantec folders.
1. Click Start, Search, and then select "Files or Folders".
2. "Look in" is set to "All drives" or to (C:).
3. Make sure that "Search subfolders" is checked. (You may have to click the "Advanced Options" arrow to display this.
4. Click All files and folders.
5. In the "All or part of the file name box" type - or copy and paste - the following text:
Symantec
6. Click Search.
7. Delete all files and folders that are found by the search.
8. Repeat search for “Norton”
9. Delete all files and folders that are found by the search.
Finish by cleaning up the Registry.
1. Click Start and then Run.
2. Type REGEDIT into the Run dialog box when it comes up and then click OK.
3. Navigate to and select the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Symantec
4. Press the Delete key on your keyboard and click Yes to confirm.
5. Navigate to and select the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Symantec
6. Press the Delete key on your keyboard and click Yes to confirm.
7. Click on File in the top toolbar and then click Exit.
Your system should now be completely clean of Norton/Symantec products.
Now clean boot your system.
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Spyware hid my CD Drive!
My neighbour’s teenager had been using his PC whilst he had been out of the country for several months.
When he came back he wanted to view some family photos on a CD. But when he went into My Computer his CD drive wasn’t shown.
Thinking it might be a virus he ran the AV program - no problems. Then he remembered that I had installed Spybot Search and Destroy for him. He ran that and when it found over 100 items he panicked and called me.
With a combination of Spybot S&D and Windows Defender I managed to clean out the spyware. But the CD drive was still not showing in My Computer.
By successfully booting up a Linux Live CD (Slax, if you really want to know) in the drive I quickly established that it wasn’t a faulty drive, cable, motherboard or BIOS.
So the fault lay within Windows - and the Microsoft Website provided the solution - it involves editing the Registry, so the usual warnings apply.
IF YOU ARE NOT CONFIDENT TO EDIT THE REGISTRY, DON’T TRY. MAKING A MISTAKE CAN WRECK YOUR WINDOWS SETUP. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Start, Run, type: regedit
Select the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/Currentcontrolset/Control /Class/{4d36e965-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
On the File menu, click Export.
Save the file with a name and location that you will remember. (You can use this to restore the following changes if they don’t work.)
Select the REG_MULTI_SZ data type UpperFilters, and then click Delete on the Edit menu. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
NOTE: If this data type is missing, don’t worry.
Select the REG_MULTI_SZ data type LowerFilters, and then click Delete on the Edit menu. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
NOTE: If this data type is also missing, then this is not the solution that you were looking for!
Quit the Registry Editor, and then restart the computer
That’s the one that worked for me, but if that doesn’t work for you, Microsoft also suggests replacing the CD driver, as follows:
Open System Properties by holding the Windows key and hitting Pause/Break
On the Hardware tab, click Device Manager.
Click the drive with the question mark next to it.
On the Action menu, click Uninstall. When you are prompted to confirm the removal, click OK.
Repeat steps 4 through 5 for any other drives with question marks.
On the Action menu, click Scan for hardware changes.
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Norton Again!
The Tip “Getting rid of Norton” should cover most eventualities, but assumes that the Norton programs are listed in Add/Remove Programs.
But what if they are not?
I was asked to look at a PC in a Nursery School - it was not connected to the Internet and they didn’t want it to be because it was purely for the kids to use for simple colouring programs etc. But at some time in its history it had had Norton 2004 installed. And now that Norton was out of date it kept popping up a reminder window every few minutes, right in front of the picture that the kids were colouring. And the kids didn’t know what was happening.
So I went to Add/Remove programs and Norton was nowhere to be found.
To cut a long story short I had to take the PC away, connect it to the Internet and run the Norton Removal Tool from the Symantec site.
The URL is too long to include here and will probably change by the time you read this, so search www.symantec.com for “symnrt”
I think that Symantec should be ashamed that they have to provide special tools to remove their programs.
And I wonder why there was no uninstall option for their programs anywhere. Did they do that?
And believe it or not, they also have to publish procedures for what to do if the Norton Removal Tool doesn’t work! (Search their site for SymNRT and see all the results!)
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Windows Defender fails to initialize
“Whenever I start my computer I have the following message come up from Windows Defender:
Application failed to intialize: 0x800106ba. A problem caused Windows Defender Service to stop. To start the service, restart your computer or Help and Support on how to start the service manually.”
The simplest solution is to uninstall Windows Defender (Start, Control Panel, Add or Remove Programs, scroll down to Windows Defender and hit the Remove button).
Follow the prompts and then completely shutdown (not standby or hibernate) and restart your PC.
Go to www.microsoft.com and go through Downloads (popular downloads) to find Windows Defender.
Download and install it again.
I know it sounds like a sledgehammer to crack a nut but it is probably the simplest way.
Other people have had the same problem and reinstalling solved it for them.
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AVG Icon stays black and white
AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition shows a “quartered flag” icon in the System Tray (or Notification area) at the bottom right of the screen. This is displayed in colour (yellow, black, red and green) if everything is OK, but turns black and white when there is a problem.
If it is always black and white, even after an update, then the likely cause is that your computer’s date is set wrongly to some date in the future.
Solution: Right click on the time in the bottom right hand corner of the task bar, select Adjust Date/Time and select today’s date.
But why was the date wrong?
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AVG Invalid CTF Control File
I don’t know why AVG sometimes gives this message, but I have discovered that the way to sort it out is to uninstall AVG, reboot the PC and then install it again from a recent download.
So, first go to http://free.avg.com/download?prd=afe , click Download AVG Free 8.0 (AVG Server) and save the file to your desktop.
Then uninstall AVG (Start, All Programs, AVG Free 8.0, Uninstall AVG Free).
Reboot the PC, then double click on the file that you downloaded to reinstall AVG.
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