Norton/Windows ME known issues?

[Nefrit]

Hey guys,

Friends computer has gone on the blink since they installed Norton ANti-Virus on it.

Basically they re getting a stream of error messages from the system when they start it up like Kernell.dll32 not present and the like and some Pop-up about Win-Fixer2005. Unfortunatley I don't have the exact details though at the moment.

On top of that the system is running very slowly, it's an old desktop PC so I guess it may be that the pocessor simply isn't fast enough to handle Norton, I notice some slow down from it on my nice shiny new PC.

I was wondering if anyone has encountered or heard of anything that may explain why this is happenign? I was thinking that if System Restore is present in ME then I may be able to do that to get rid of some of the stuff they have on their liker Norton and Win-Fixer and maybe be able to get the thing to stop crashing often enough that i can find out what else is wrong. Any thoughts or suggetions?

 

[SaladFork]

If you’re using Norton 2004, good luck getting that off there without reformatting. I also had problems but was on XP at the time. Are you really running Windows Me? Microsoft dropped support for that OS years ago which means Norton doesn’t have to support it either, that might be your main problem.

Unistall Norton, search Google for AVG, it’s free works great.
T-

 

[johnny-longtorso]

Aside from the (hopefully) obvious answer of "re-install with XP if at all possible", here's what I'd do:

1) delete all temp files. Use the "System Tools" -> "Disk Cleanup" option and get rid of old crap. About the worst offender is IE - if the disk originally had lots of free space IE will set itself to cache a HUGE amount of data. If you're savvy enough, go into the IE options and set the cache file to something reasonable like 50MB (and you can also set it to "clear cache on exit")

2) uninstall crap programs. (this means Norton) Typically, when someone asks me to "rescue" a PC that's running like I crap I will go through the "Add/Remove Programs" tool (in Control Panel) and if they can't tell me exactly what they use a program for I uninstall it. The only point of caution here is drivers - there may be drivers for printers, scanners, or other odd hardware that has to be left alone. However, you can usually spot "Internet junk" and bogus browser toolbars here...

3) Look at the start menu items. If there' a lot of crap starting by default consider turning some of it off. Sometimes this can take a bit more knowledge, but again, if there's items that you have no idea what they are they can likely go. Ferinstance - Adobe Acrobat will always start the "acrotray" widget to make Acrobat launch faster, but it also eats a few ticks of system performance. I don't recall for sure if WinME had "task manager" functions, but try looking at the running processes via "control-alt-delete" when NO other tasks are open - this is another way to see what crap is running in the background and eating your RAM and CPU....

4) Look for trojans and malware. I LOVE SpyBot. It's got a decent scanner, can be set up to run on a schedule, and had a nice feature called "Tea Timer" that runs in the background and prevents programs from adding those "secret" start items and hijacking other parts of the system..... SpyBot has tools that will also let you look at the aforementioned "startup items" and selectively turn them off or delete them entirely. This is a nice feature because it lets you test the results of turning crap off - if something doesn't work right after the next boot just come back in and turn it back on.....

5) Defrag the drive. This is particularly important for Win98 and ME. Note that some of those background programs can actually "tickle" the hard drive by writing temp files, etc - and this will CONSTANTLY restart the defrag tool - if that is the case, restart in "safe mode" (hit F8 during boot) and run it there.
If you're a "power user" you can delete the Windows system temp file (pagefile.sys) in Safe Mode and defrag with that out of the way for a little more defragmentation. (do NOT f**k with this if you have no idea what it's about)

6) Virus scan. I prefer to use tools OUTSIDE the OS - one good one can be found at http://housecall65.trendmicro.com. If you don't have broadband don't even try it. Note that this site is great if you have a machine that is so totally screwed with malware or hijackers that it won't even boot - you can pull the drive, install it as the SECONDARY drive in another system and then use the online tools to scan & clean it.

7) if required - buy more RAM. But honestly, you can get a complete system from WalMart for $200 that will prolly outperform any machine old enough to run WinME as it did when purchased.

WinME really is a turd. I'd blow it away and install Linux if it were mine / my friends....

Good luck
Don

 

[BigboyAl]

windows me is the issue. its sucks and known for the terrible bugs. just get xp or vista fast!!

 

[bluepeter]

For crying out load, get Windows ME off that machine.

:shudder:

 

[drsketch]

norton blows balls, as do all symantec products
Windows me stopped being supported days if not hours after its release.

Invest 400$ get a new machine with xp or vista on it.
Nod32 makes for a good AV, Kapersky is also good. AVG AV Free edition is good, though has been known to have memory leaks.