Start Menu + System Restore

G

Guest

Greetings,
I have a stickler with my home PC that occured last night sometime and could
really use some pointers. Windows XP Professional, SP2 + all current
updates. Fairly clean, recent install. Only system tools running are Norton
AV 2007.

Three things occurred last night while the system was working:
1) Installed, tried and uninstalled PC Invoice (fully virus checked after
downloading trial).
2) Norton AV 2007 performed an automatic update at like 3AM
3) Windows Update fired off but unsure if it did anything at around 2AM

This morning the behaviors I am seeing:
a) Start Menu pops up, but "All Programs >" does nothing.
b) Right-clicking on Start-Menu has "Open" but not the familiar "Open All
Users" available.
c) I have a Remote Desktop icon I use to connect to another PC on the LAN.
It no longer has my username/password set and will not launch (just makes the
error sound when I click connect and type username/password).
d) System Restore does not work!

I tried rolling back to System Checkpoint from prior day, then Tuesday, then
Monday and finally Sunday. None of these roll-back attempts work. They do
the deed, reboot, then report that Checkpoint Incomplete and no changes were
made to my system.

The system, last night, worked flawlessly without problems. I went to bed
and left it on (as I always do) and this morning it was in this state.
Rebooted, same. Inspected logs, event viewer, etc. No real indications..
then tried a few rollbacks.

Event Log is clean- has some MSI Installers starting/stopping for Norton and
Windows Update, but no errors or other indications in the time frame the
problem occurred.

My question would be:
1) How do I diagnose or see System Restore errors? I'd be most interested
in rolling back and never had System Restore fail before. Is there a log
somewhere I can look at to possibly self-diagnose the problem?
2) Are there any known problems with recent Norton AV or Windows Updates
that cause this start-menu/credential problem (assuming credential problem as
Remote Desktop save is missing username/password and wont allow me to create
a new RDP file with them either)?

Thanks!
 
J

JS

There have been a lot of .NET update problems but I can't say if this cause
your issue.
Might want to check and post to: microsoft.public.windowsupdate

JS
 
B

Bert Kinney

Hi,

NAV will cause System Restore to fail. Try running System Restore from Safe
Mode.

For Norton users:
"Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored . . . "
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/symantecdoc1.html

Starting Windows XP in Safe Mode:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/safemode.html

Here are some more troubleshooting steps to take when System Restore fails
to restore:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/srfail.html

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org
 
H

HEMI-Powered

=?Utf-8?B?Q29uZnV6emxlZA==?= added these comments in the current
discussion du jour ...
Greetings,
I have a stickler with my home PC that occured last night
sometime and could really use some pointers. Windows XP
Professional, SP2 + all current updates. Fairly clean, recent
install. Only system tools running are Norton AV 2007.

Three things occurred last night while the system was working:
1) Installed, tried and uninstalled PC Invoice (fully virus
checked after downloading trial).
2) Norton AV 2007 performed an automatic update at like 3AM
3) Windows Update fired off but unsure if it did anything at
around 2AM

This morning the behaviors I am seeing:
a) Start Menu pops up, but "All Programs >" does nothing.
b) Right-clicking on Start-Menu has "Open" but not the
familiar "Open All Users" available.
c) I have a Remote Desktop icon I use to connect to another PC
on the LAN. It no longer has my username/password set and
will not launch (just makes the error sound when I click
connect and type username/password). d) System Restore does
not work!

I tried rolling back to System Checkpoint from prior day, then
Tuesday, then Monday and finally Sunday. None of these
roll-back attempts work. They do the deed, reboot, then
report that Checkpoint Incomplete and no changes were made to
my system.

The system, last night, worked flawlessly without problems. I
went to bed and left it on (as I always do) and this morning
it was in this state. Rebooted, same. Inspected logs, event
viewer, etc. No real indications.. then tried a few
rollbacks.

Event Log is clean- has some MSI Installers starting/stopping
for Norton and Windows Update, but no errors or other
indications in the time frame the problem occurred.

My question would be:
1) How do I diagnose or see System Restore errors? I'd be
most interested in rolling back and never had System Restore
fail before. Is there a log somewhere I can look at to
possibly self-diagnose the problem? 2) Are there any known
problems with recent Norton AV or Windows Updates that cause
this start-menu/credential problem (assuming credential
problem as Remote Desktop save is missing username/password
and wont allow me to create a new RDP file with them either)?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Good luck with your problem. I'm not nearly enough of a Windows
system guru to even hazard a guess for you, but maybe I could
offer some advice. When you get things back running again, PLEASE
turn off the auto-update stuff! I can think of nothing more
problematical that either Windows updating itself in the middle
of the night or some other systems program doing that. People go
to bed with a fully functional system and wake up to a nightmare.
You may have seen me comment before that I ALWAYS set my own RP
before I allow anything to update itself, I have Windows and NAV
set to "notify but don't download", and I lurk around here to see
if any problems arise with an MS fix, like the .NET problem still
going on.

Question: do you have an imager like Acronis True Image or Norton
Ghost? About every 6 weeks, I do a very comprehensive malware
scan of both my PCs and them an image backup of my primary
partitions. I store all of my data on extended partitions so I
wouldn't lose anything I created and using True Image to recover
from a disaster seems preferable to a nuke-and-reinstall
shuffle.,

Again, good luck finding a solution for your problem.
 
H

HEMI-Powered

Bert Kinney added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
Hi,

NAV will cause System Restore to fail. Try running System
Restore from Safe Mode.
Click to expand...

Thankfully, my need for a RP roll-back have been few and far
between, in large part because I do not allow things like NAV and
Windows to update themselves in the middle of the night. Even
though I run NAV on both my PCs, 2003 on my XP SP1 box and 2006 on
my XP SP2 box, I haven't seen it do anything to RP. Maybe I've just
been lucky all the way around ...
 
G

Guest

Thanks to everyone for their input. I finally got my system working properly.

The problem was isolated to a Norton update that was corrupted (looks like
the download was corrupt). This corruption wiped out a large set of the
Local User registry keys in the process. Even with NAV disabled and Safe
Mode, the restore process still failed.

I managed to fully uninstall NAV 2007, boot into safe mode, perform some
registry work and luckily do have registry backups. I merged keys to get a
basic registry solid as Adminstrator, then use a very old (pre-NAV)
checkpoint to work.

I have multiple offices with multiple PC's so automatic updates is crucial
for my needs. I work in three different locales with 2-3 PC's each so
keeping track of updates for the three locations is difficult. This is the
only locale that uses Norton and is all fresh PC's (fresh installs less than
3 months ago). Other locales have been flawless for multiple years but use
AVG and BitDefender for AV protection.

This particular PC had initial problems when it was deployed with it's
2-year remaining NAV 2005 license. (new PC is Intel ICH9R chipset + SATA),
which Symantec support worked through by upgrading to 2006 (same problem) and
finally 2007 which removed the problem. Due to this, I'll be migrating this
to BitDefender due to AV software having impact above and beyond any virus
ever encountered in 10+ years of computing at these locales!

Thanks again for all the tips/insights! I'm back up and running on the
troubled PC.
 
H

HEMI-Powered

Bert Kinney added these comments in the current discussion du
jour ...
Hi,

Running NAV it's just a matter of time.
Click to expand...

So given that MS has the best software, what do they offer which
 

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