G
Guest
I attempted to download and install Norton Antivirus 8. It looked like it
was processing and then received an error message - something like unexpected
result or something. I decided to try Norton AV 7.6. It was partially through
the install and a warning popped up and said something like incompatible or
older file (do not remember the filename). It gave the option to continue or
cancel. I selected cancel.
At some point the Norton Updater was installed - every so often a dialog
would pop up and say can't run Updater as Norton not installed.
I went into add/remove programs to remove the Updater and found 2 entries
for Norton - the Updater and then one for NAV 7.6. Uninstalled the Updater
with seemingly no problems. Attempted to uninstall the other one. After a
short time, the PC froze up. I did ctrl-alt-delete and it showed that the
process had stopped responding. Attempted to stop the task. Computer was
restarted. Windows reopened and all icons on the desktop had lost their
associated picture, they were default icons. Restarted PC. Same problem.
Upon checking in windows explorer, almost every program under Program Files
had been deleted. In some cases the directory still existed, but it was
empty. In some cases the whole directory was gone. Most notably my Canon
direcory which contained my digital camera utilities along with ALL my
pictures was gone. As well, my ebooks were deleted. The list goes on.
However, when you go to add/remove programs, the programs are still in the
list along with NAV7.6 one that I was trying to remove. Also, all my files in
the My Documents folder were untouched.
Attempted to "reinstall" 2 of the "deleted" programs - Microsoft Works and
CIL Paint. Works would not reinstall, CIL did.
A friend suggested System Restore as maybe the registry or pointer to the
files was broken, but after reading about it that only seems to fix the
operating system and the OS seems to be running ok. It also said it takes
200MB free space. If I try this option, will it overwrite the disk space
being occupied by the "deleted" files making any chance of file recovery
impossible?
Please help me figure out what happened and how I can fix it.
was processing and then received an error message - something like unexpected
result or something. I decided to try Norton AV 7.6. It was partially through
the install and a warning popped up and said something like incompatible or
older file (do not remember the filename). It gave the option to continue or
cancel. I selected cancel.
At some point the Norton Updater was installed - every so often a dialog
would pop up and say can't run Updater as Norton not installed.
I went into add/remove programs to remove the Updater and found 2 entries
for Norton - the Updater and then one for NAV 7.6. Uninstalled the Updater
with seemingly no problems. Attempted to uninstall the other one. After a
short time, the PC froze up. I did ctrl-alt-delete and it showed that the
process had stopped responding. Attempted to stop the task. Computer was
restarted. Windows reopened and all icons on the desktop had lost their
associated picture, they were default icons. Restarted PC. Same problem.
Upon checking in windows explorer, almost every program under Program Files
had been deleted. In some cases the directory still existed, but it was
empty. In some cases the whole directory was gone. Most notably my Canon
direcory which contained my digital camera utilities along with ALL my
pictures was gone. As well, my ebooks were deleted. The list goes on.
However, when you go to add/remove programs, the programs are still in the
list along with NAV7.6 one that I was trying to remove. Also, all my files in
the My Documents folder were untouched.
Attempted to "reinstall" 2 of the "deleted" programs - Microsoft Works and
CIL Paint. Works would not reinstall, CIL did.
A friend suggested System Restore as maybe the registry or pointer to the
files was broken, but after reading about it that only seems to fix the
operating system and the OS seems to be running ok. It also said it takes
200MB free space. If I try this option, will it overwrite the disk space
being occupied by the "deleted" files making any chance of file recovery
impossible?
Please help me figure out what happened and how I can fix it.