On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 5:52 PM, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote: > From: Adam Maas >> >> Wipe drive, re-install OS and applications without Norton (Which is a >> system-killer, not an anti-virus). Get a real anti-virus program like >> AVG or Avira. >> >> -Adam >> >> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 8:21 AM, William Robb <[email protected]> wrote: >>> >>> > So, I have this really high strung Windows box, and every now and again >>> > it >>> > does something completely inexplicable. >>> > It's latest is on boot-up, it decides it can't start the video card: >>> > >>> > Code 10, device cannot be started >>> > >>> > And the card runs in VGA mode. >>> > Sometmes rebooting the computer will solve it, more often than not I >>> > have to >>> > uninstall the driver and reinstall it. >>> > >>> > Now, the specifics: >>> > It is an ASUS motherboard with an ASUS (Nvidea) graphics card, and the >>> > problem started immediately after installing Norton antivirus (which I >>> > have >>> > come to despise). >>> > >>> > What I'm thinking is that Norton created a file with the same name as >>> > one of >>> > the Nvidea driver files and so the wrong file is picked up on boot and >>> > causes the card to crash. > > I see this all the time, and I don't understand it. I believe people when > they say Norton messed up this and that on their system, but I used Norton > for years and years and never had any problems from it. > > The only reason I switched to AVG is I could no longer get Norton for free > after I retired from the military. >
I've seen dozens of machines completely trashed by various bits of Norton/Symantec software (mostly the Anti-Virus and Firewall tools these days) in the days since Norton Utilities became Windows Software (NU was great back when it was DOS software and it worked on far simpler problems). Norton touches far more bits of the OS than is necessary for what the package is atcually doing and digs itself into the system registry and DLL files to make uninstallation difficult to impossible. Norton does work on some systems and can in many cases uninstall cleanly (generally only if the system's registry hasn't been significantly changed since the Norton Install) but the quickest way to trash a perfectly functional windows system I've ever seen is to install Norton on it. And Norton Anti-Virus doesn't even work very well as an AV tool. It's one of the few common pieces of software I see that really should pay users to use it. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
