wierd: symantec uninstall breaks internet connection

[Mike Williams]

With Windows XP-Professional, SP2:
I had a working system, with Norton SystemWorks 2003 installed and a cable
internet connection. After uninstalling NSW, by the book, the internet
connection is broken -- or, I should say, the network connection; I'm on a
small home network. I found that by going to a previous system restore
point, the connection works again. Uninstall again, breaks. Restore,
works. Ran a manual uninstall, line by line, by Symantec's instructions.
Same results. Had the ISP techs on the phone for an hour. No change.
Installed the lastest LAN card drivers. No change.
Symptoms: in the Network Properties panel, the connection shows as
"Acquiring Network Connection" or something to that effect, and stays
there. Clicking Repair produces an error message that a repair can't be
completed because there's no connection. boot up, btw, is extremely slow
in the driver loading stage. I have Windows Firewall disabled, and after
the hangey boot period passes, the Windows Security Center icon is the next
thing to appear in the taskbar. Any suggestions would be enormously
appreciated. I'm about to trash the whole machine and reformat. Grrrrr.
Thanks.

 

[jeffrey]

Hi,

Have you tried to search through the registry for anything linking itself to
Nortons or Symantec? Might be left over junk that is still looking for NSW
2003 and overriding Windows standard files. I would try to delete any
registry entries related to NSW 2003, defrag, reboot, then run sfc /scannow.
I don`t know if that will help, but it could be worth a try.

Jeff

 

[CS]

With Windows XP-Professional, SP2:
I had a working system, with Norton SystemWorks 2003 installed and a cable
internet connection. After uninstalling NSW, by the book, the internet
connection is broken -- or, I should say, the network connection; I'm on a
small home network. I found that by going to a previous system restore
point, the connection works again. Uninstall again, breaks. Restore,
works. Ran a manual uninstall, line by line, by Symantec's instructions.
Same results. Had the ISP techs on the phone for an hour. No change.
Installed the lastest LAN card drivers. No change.
Symptoms: in the Network Properties panel, the connection shows as
"Acquiring Network Connection" or something to that effect, and stays
there. Clicking Repair produces an error message that a repair can't be
completed because there's no connection. boot up, btw, is extremely slow
in the driver loading stage. I have Windows Firewall disabled, and after
the hangey boot period passes, the Windows Security Center icon is the next
thing to appear in the taskbar. Any suggestions would be enormously
appreciated. I'm about to trash the whole machine and reformat. Grrrrr.
Thanks.

Did you download and run the Symantec registry cleaners to get rid of
all the entries that NSW leaves behind? I doubt you could have
manually removed them all and I know for a fact that uninstalling NSW
from Control Panel does not remove them.

Look for symclean.exe and rnav2003.exe

You didn't mention which NSW programs you had installed, however, from
experience it seems that NAV creates the most entries and startup
services.

I've removed NSW 2003 several times from various machines and have not
run into the problem you describe. You might try running the
connection wizard again, who knows what files or services that may
have been removed by the uninstall process?

 

[Mike Williams]

Did you download and run the Symantec registry cleaners to get rid of

all the entries that NSW leaves behind?

I ran rnav2003 for every possible year, as directed by symantec's manual
uninstall instructions; didn't run symclean though. those instructions
were very thorough about reg entries, and i was very careful. I've
deinstalled nsw2003 myself from other machines and never had this happen.

You didn't mention which NSW programs you had installed,

the only symantec product on that machine is NSW2003.

Last go-round, I ran the network connection wizard again, all went ok,
problem not solved.

I just now restored again, and the internet connection is back to normal.
Very strange. I wish there was some way of saving a log-like printout of
all the settings, before and after, to run a comparison of some kind and
see what's different.

 

[Mike Williams]

Hi,

Have you tried to search through the registry for anything linking
itself to Nortons or Symantec? Might be left over junk that is still
looking for NSW 2003 and overriding Windows standard files. I would
try to delete any registry entries related to NSW 2003, defrag,
reboot, then run sfc /scannow. I don`t know if that will help, but it
could be worth a try.

Jeff

I've been through the registry with a fine-toothed comb. Haven't run sfc
/scannow, though. I have another registry utility on that machine, Super
Utilities. Maybe I'll run that next go-round and see what turns up.