When I came to work today, one of the desktops in the office was popping up the following message:
Norton Antivirus 2006 was unable to start instant messenger scanner. It will be unable to scan instant messenger downloads for infections.
It had a link to a knowledge base article that claimed that I need to run live update to fix this issue. Unfortunately, Live Update decided to tell me it encountered an internal error, pointing me to another Symantec page. I tried running the Live Update fix from the website, but it complained that the Windows Installer service was not running.
I popped over to services.msc and indeed, both the installer service, and live update services were stopped, and set to manuals start. I started both of them, set them to automatic and ran the fix tool again.
This time it went through and I was able to run Live Update which fetched some new stuff and told me to reboot. Once I was back, I got the same error message about Messenger, and both Live Update and Installer services were disabled. I repeated the whole procedure, and got the same result only this time the Intel Pro Wireless controler (Zcfgsvc.exe) and the HP printer software crashed on startup. The system was a mess.
I ran a virus scan, spybot and adaware but all came back clean. HijackThis log was pristine clean too – I checked every entry twice, and there was nothing in there that I did not want to run. I rebooted few more times, and I kept getting the same issues – Norton broken, Windows Installer service disabled and Wireless and Printer tray apps crashing and spamming error dialogs to the screen.
I did a system restore to last Wednesday, and it did not fix a thing. I got the same batch of errors on startup. So I decided to uninstall Norton and upgrade it to the 2007 version because I happened to have a CD for it lying around. That was the only thing I could think of at the moment. I should have dropped Norton right there and then…
Uninstalling the software from Control Panel did not work. The thing went half way through installation, and then gave me bunch of strange error messages simply saying “Could not Uninstall Norton Antivirus: Abort, Retry, Ignore”.
Retry button did nothing. Ignore button skipped to the next component (ie. firewall, anti-spam, etc..). Unfortunately each component kept failing in turn, and the process left Norton in a completely broken state on my system. I could no longer run it, and I could not reinitialize uninstall script because the relevant files got deleted. Ugh…
The only way to get the thing off the system now was to use the Norton Removal Tool from the Symantec website. It worked for me and removed the broken installation. After the reboot, the wireless and printer software magically came back to life. I checked the services, and the installer was running as it should.
I popped in the NIS 2007 CD into the drive and started installation. It prompted me to uninstall Spybot, and I did that. Then the installation stopped with an error, and prompted me to use the Norton Removal tool again to get rid of all the old Symantec versions on the system. I did that, and tried again – with the same result.
So I went through the file system and searching for every instance of Symantec and Norton. There were still Norton related files in C:\Program Files\Common Files and also in %APPDATA% and a ton of temp files in %TEMP%.
I also fun through registry and deleted all the references to Symantec or Norton there. After about an hour of that crap, I was able to successfully install NIS 2007. It worked just fine, so I ran Live Update and installed all the updates and got prompted to reboot.
When the system came back, Norton would not start. It simply gave me an error message with a link to Symantec Knowledge Base article that essentially told me that my installation is fucked up beyond repair, and I need to reinstall.
I went back to Control Panel and started uninstalling it. The uninstallation dialog showed up on the screen, displayed a nice progress bar for a minute or two, and then just disappeared. There was no error message, or notification. It would just quit with no warning. The Norton Removal Tool did the same thing – it would run for about a minute, and then just exit out without warning or error message.
I figured this might have been Norton’s internal protection scheme in action. Unfortunately I could not disable it, because the damn thing would not start for me.
So I did System Restore again… The system came back thinking that it still has NIS 2006 in place so I uninstalled it from Control Panel. This time the process went without a hitch. Just to make sure everything is gone, I ran the removal tool. All the files from Program Files got deleted, and system was running just fine.
So I installed McAfee on it, ran another virus scan and the system behaved perfectly. I reinstalled Spybot for a good measure, and handed it off back to the user. What a waste of time. I was fighting with that damn system for over 5 hours in total.
I still have no idea what caused some of the system services to stop, or why the wireless and printer software was acting crazy. But I’m assuming that it’s either something that was done to the system over the weekend (and System Restore fixed it) or it was caused by Norton. Either way, they are working perfectly now.
Can someone explain to me why is NIS 2007 harder to remove than the fucking Vundo trojan?
[tags]symantec, norton internet security, nis 2007, nis 2006, norton, norton removal tool[/tags]
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Matt also has issues with Norton and would like very much to feed their CEO the CD it came on
The Sonofabitch came preinstalled (bloody Dell), and there were 4 or 5 separate entries for Symantec stuff in Add/Remove Programs – Internet Security, Antivirus, Firewall, Live Update, Toolbar, all that kind of crap.
I start at the top, uninstall won’t happen because “this component is required for other Symantec shit parts x and y”.
Next Item, same problem, all the way down to the bottom one in the list which apparently is the Master Key that unlocks all the other components and allows you to finally uninstall everything
Anyone put in mind of the puzzles in games where you have to go through doors in a certain order? It shouldnt be that hard to remove a program.
After reboot error messages start asking “Where’s Norton?” God knows where these things are coming from or why, but they are quite annoying. Luckily the Norton remover tool (when I found out about it a few days later) fixed that up.
Also, never _ever_ try and run it on a low-spec machine, it brought our older desktop to a standstill. Swapped it for AVG, works fine
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I got tired and frustrated just reading the post…I can only imagine how you felt after 5 hours of this crap.
Both of you (Luke and Matt) are brave souls, I would NEVER run Norton on any of my machines. Had issues with it where it was a huge memory hog; blocks outgoing e-mails without real notification it only tells you that remote relay is not allowed – WTF; it’s a bitch to remove (as you both know)…it’s just been painful every time. I must say that I am happy and Norton free for years now.
Products I would recommend are Kaspersky Labs, McAfee and AVG.
Matt – indeed, Norton will not run on older machines. NIS 2007 runs slow on a 2 GHz machine with 2 GB of RAM – WTF?
Miloš – I have been using both McAfee and the Free AVG on different machines and I have been relatively happy with them. Never used Kaspersky, but I might give that a try. How does it compare to McAfee for example?
The latest and greatest from McAfee seems to be heading the same way as Norton lately. I upgraded my desktop at home to their new thing, and it is about 3 times slower and less responsive.
Btw, what about Sophos? Is it any good? I know that the whole MSU campus is running it and I always wondered if there is some reason for it or was it just a choice someone made at some point. :P
My experience with Kaspersky has been superior. However, I must admit that I haven’t used their latest version of Internet Security yet. They generally release their DAT/IDE (or however each vendor calls them nowadays) files a lot sooner than any other vendor I have ever used. I have also never encountered their app being corrupted or stop working on its own. From my personal experience, I believe that they also have more accurate SPAM ratings than McAfee.
Sophos is a bit better now than it was when we first switched over, but it is still not a solution I am happy with. In its early days at MSU a friend of mine and I created a folder on my desktop infested with quite a few popular viruses from that time and ran a full scan which found NOTHING! That was unbelievable to me. Also, they now claim that their v.6.5 works on Vista, but we weren’t able to get it to work, so we have installed AVG and it works like a charm. Not really sure on how the decision was made and by whom, but I believe that more technical people should have been involved in the process.
LOL! Why am I not surprised by this?
Next time I have a machine that needs an AV I will check out Kaspersky.
Well this was on a 5-6 year old machine with only 128mb of RAM and a god-knows-how-old processor, and it was NIS ’06
Poor thing never stood a chance
Keep paying into their pockets, Silverwood themepark (http://www.silverwoodthemepark.com) is owned by the nortons and its my favorite local themepark … the only one
a) you could have installed Ubuntu in 30 mins and forget about it ;) i know, i know…
b) are you sure you need an antivirus? i also work in a microsoft shop – we have none. we have routers (that protect only incoming connections), we are all power users and there is an email filter / scanner, and nobody uses IE – these are all the protections from viruses we have, and we have no viruses. apart from windows itself ;) of course. the shitty MS servers keep denying services from time to time, clients get broken so that one after another necessary tools wont start or crash regularly…
a) I can’t – the user needs MS Office and Quickbooks to do her work. She also uses several custom windows-only accounting template applications used by various companies we work with.
b) The user who owns this machine is clueless, and does get it infested from time to time.
So yeah, I was kinda stuck.
U seem to be loosing track a bit, this post should be on how to solve the problem that we are facing , not how crap the Norton Anti Virus Is.
u get me ppl.
Any 1 have the answer to the Error plzz post it here and free us from this stupid error.
thanks
Well, the thing is – I didn’t find any viable solutions.
If you’re having troubles with Norton, my solution would be to remove it and install something better
I have two computers, this is my brothers computer , on my computer i have XZone alarm and i think its fantastic.
I just want to find out that what is causing this message and how to solve it.
I have been cheating with Symantec ppl but, they dont know anything, they are useless, unable to help. i think no1 knows resolution of this problem.
its chatting** not cheating sorry
I am a system builder with over 25 years experience, I have never in my life come across such a resource hungry piece of software as Norton 2006 and 2007. There is a little know thing with Norton 2006, it installs a hidden and encrypted registery key that cannot be seen or removed from the registery. This stops you from re-installing a totaly legal and legit version of Norton 2006 ? WHY….. I think it does this to lock you into Nortons product base as the only way around this is to upgrade to NIS2007.
What a pirce of crappy software it will not be going anywhare near any systems i build install or setup ever again THANKS Norton for the grief
Interesting… How do you know about the hidden registry entry? Was any analysis done to detect this?
This NORTON IS A PIECE OF SHIT. I manually uninstalled the whole damn software. Now… I run into a hidden registry… I wasted nearly 3 hours, trying to find the damn Norton Internet Worm Security. I realized the file is hidden. What a bummer. Someone help me. It’s pissing me off. My 1 month old laptop runs like a pentium 1 processor. It’s getting aggravating… This software came preinstalled in my new laptop… I’m trying to switch over to McAffe. I will never use Norton again…
I agree with ALL comments about what a piece of Crap Norton is.
I am currently trying to fix 27 PCs which came with NIS 2007 60 day trial version pre-installed. I have tried to uninstall it on a few machines with the Nortion-removal-tool and it required that Office 2007 reconfigure itself. After that I loaded an older corporate client version which receives updates from the server.
Now it takes 5 minutes to open Word and up to 30 minutes to open Outlook 2007. The users are thoroughly P.O.’d and I have to resolve the issue before carrying on. When I tried to remove the older client it asks for the removal password – which of course it doesn’t recognise. Does anyone know a back door password for removal for V9.0.0.338
Oh wow… Sorry but I’m don’t think I know how to help here, Ken. It seems like a total fubar. I hope you get it worked out though. Good luck!
I figured how to remove NIS 2007! Hahaha it took me a good 2 hours. If you intend on deleting this piece of crap, I recommend you use registry mechanic. However, you get the full version, I leave that to you. What you first do, is add/remove the software.
1. Uninstall Norton.
2. Go to Common Files – Remove Norton
3. Manually find Norton and Symantec Files on your harddrive. Press delete.
4. Go to run msconfig –
a. Disable all startup for Norton / Symantec
5. Go to run regedit –
a. Search for Norton – Should take you about a good 10 minutes deleting this piece of crap.
b. Search for Symantec – If your patient, delete this crap manually. You really have no choice, unless you prefer to format.
6. Go use your reg edit.
APPROXIMATE TIME – 2 to 3 hours!
*you get the full version = getting the full version
Good job Peter. Why can’t their uninstaller script do all of that? Oh, yeas – because they suck. I forget. :P
I have to say that i agree with Peter about the removal of the program I did this myself in the end, and yes it appeared to be removed. The problem then started with re-installing a brand new LEGAL copy with a totally different licence key. It installs fine no problem there then, run through all of the next steps and hay ho it looks good for a re-install then however try and get it to give you a full years subscription ? it aint going to happen because the new and legit copy of Norton then looks at the reg key that to my knowledge has not yet been revealed or found and takes its subsription details from daid key, I.E 3 days to go before it runs out the only reason for this appears to be to lock you in to an upgrade path with Norton because the only way around this is to upgrade to NAV/NIS 2007 bad stuff from the brothers norton……..
John,
The best way at this point is reformat your computer. The only way my solution works, is don’t ever use Norton. Just curious, did you use the registry mechanics? It should automatically delete any Norton/Symantec rogue registries. If that doesn’t work, here’s my proposal, back up your core data, and reformat your computer. This way the crappy Norton, won’t look at your former registries, and it’ll suddenly think it’s new. For myself, I now use McAffe. I believe it is significantly better since my new computer does not lag and works efficiently. I only use legit copies.
John,
Had the same problem with using a legal copy of NIS 2007 to update a legal version of NIS 2006 on 3 PC’s. After fighting with the first 2, I found that if you uninstall NIS 2006 and Live Update using MS “add/Remove”, then install NIS 2007 from CD. When you do this, it picks up the old Product Key (not sure where from – registry or possibly some file left behind after removal with “Add/Remove”) and goes on to tell you you have 0 days of protection left without asking for the new product key. If you open NIS, click io the Norton Internet Security Tab at the top of the main frame, open the Support section, and at the bottom under Subscription and Account Information click on Activate your product, a wizard opens which takes you to a window in which you can enter your new Product Key
Hi There:
Its Ken again. My final solution was to search the registry for every occurance of “Norton Internet Security” and remove the line or the key.
There were hundreds of entries, and this after running the Norton Removal Tool. After 5 run-thrus I’ve now got it down to 35 minutes.
I have since downloaded a copy of Registrar Lite 2.0 from
http://www.answersthatwork.com which searches and creates a list of occurances which can be viewed and deleted en masse.
Now just 19 machines to go.
Ken,
That’s awesome! I hope my former comments can assist you in getting rid of the unnecessary time consuming pain. 19… That’s quite painful. I would just try to program some application to just run for the 19 machines. Just doing 1, gave me hell. If you program one, I can probably assist. =)
[quote post=”1365″]Now just 19 machines to go.[/quote]
Ouch! Man that must suck!
[quote post=”1365″]I would just try to program some application to just run for the 19 machines.[/quote]
Actually you could just create a .reg file that deletes all these entries. Then all you would have to do is to put that file into a shared folder on the network, then have all your machines mount that folder and run it on bootup via login script.
Then you just reboot them and wait for the magic to happen.
Btw, if you create a .reg file that would wipe or zero out all NIS values, I would gladly host it here.
Sorry to be a kill joy chaps but I have tried all of the above apart from the re-install etc cant do this as the said machines are customer PCs and I still have the same problem.
Have now advised six customers of this problem and the fact that norton slows the PC to a snails pace and they are quite happy to use another product personnaly until there is a cure for this issue this is what i shall be doing not wasting time trying to sort out a really stupid corporate route taken by Symantec. ENOUGH I SAY
John, I agree – I no longer use Norton on new company machines and I advise my users against using it.
Still, some people are locked into it by a Support contract with Symantec, or company policy so I would love to give them as much help on this issue as possible.
Thanks to Barrington for the soultion for installing the new key for my legal version of Internet Security 2007, worked like a charm. Wish I would have found this board yesterday, before I wasted two hours of my time. You’re my new hero.
Hi Everyone:
Well I finally cleaned up those 27 machines. After problems with the first 8, and having to remove hundreds of registry entries manually on a few of them, I found the answer. It was as follows:
1 – go into Norton and turn everything off (email scanning, file scanning,
Internet browsing, etc.
2 – run the Norton Removal Tool which you can download from the internet,
3 – Run Regedit and search for “Norton Internet” and delete anything you
find that looks like an NIS entry,
4 – You will have to do several reboots during the process, but in the end
your PC will be clean.
The process on the above machines was a real bitch to resolve but the last 20 machines or so went pretty quickly.
I have since delivered about a dozen PC’s on which I deleted the “Trial” version of Norton Products and installed the Free version of AVG Antivirus, along with AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy. This Combo has kept my home office environment clean for many years and I recommend it to all my clients.
And now the BAD news. Where I reside, in South-Western Ontario Canada, Rogers is one of the major internet service providers. Rogers
has an arrangement with Yahoo and Symantic and markets “free” Norton anti-virus to customers. I have had to run cleanup on several customers with experiences that include not being able to access their email (Norton firewall). Corrupt Internet Explorer – eventually leading to a total crash in the operating system – Windows XP Pro.
I think it is criminal that these companies can allow a “free” download of
software that will virtually kill a system that does not have enough hardware/software resource to handle the product. I think that Government at all levels should have in place an ombudsman to review
consumer problems caused by “free” downloads.
Thanx
Ken
@Ken – while I agree that having Symantec as free download is not the best situation for us (IT people), I don’t think there is anything wrong with the deal. As long as they don’t actually install the software along with the ISP’s bundle it’s just a promotion.
Oh, and Free download of Symantec is never really free. You will usually get 30 days free and then you have to start paying. :P
Anyway, thanks for the info. I’m glad to hear that it is not impossible to clean these machines. :)
Hi, I am looking for help. I uninstalled an older version of Norton on my daughters’ Dell laptop so that I could download a newer version of McAfee. I used add/remove programs to uninstall. Now I cannot connect to the internet with her laptop. The internet worked fine before I did the uninstall of norton. We use netgear to connect. Netgear is running with a strong signal, but we cannot open internet explorer. Our other two computers work fine with the wireless internet. Any help would be appreciated as I have no idea how to fix this.
Thanks, Aurelia
@ Aurelia:
So… Is this a networking issue or Internet Explorer issue?
Can you access the local network? Do you get an IP? Can you ping local machines? How about remote stuff?
If it’s just IE, I’d say that the short term solution would be to install Firefox or Chrome on that machine. You know, download it, put the msi file on a thumb drive, etc…
From there you can figure out why IE is not working.
@ Luke Maciak:
Luke,
Thanks for the reply. We can get an IP, also can ping local machines. This computer worked fine until I uninstalled Norton. Netgear says we have a strong signal, so I assume it is an Internet Explorer issue caused by whatever happen when I did the uninstall. I have very little understanding and/or experience with this sort of thing, so I’ll try your suggestion and see what happens.
Thanks, I appreciate your help.
Aurelia