@ 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

@ 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.

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

@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 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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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. =)