Quote from mr_x :

Sorry to come into this but working in a small computer shop I see every day what Norton does to computers, includes slowing them down to below snails speed, and when it wants a license renewal it really does mess up the system until it is removed (using the removal tool, add/remove programs just doesn't do it!), it generally does more bad than good to PCs. Removing Norton from a PC gives a speed increase more than a memory upgrade does, for Norton users it's the cheapest way to upgrade your computer!

I'd never recommend Norton to anybody at all, and advise anybody with Norton to get rid of it once they have gone and got some decent AV protection. Same goes for Mcafee.

If you want to go free, use AVG or Avast.

agreed, I have Norton and the computer was working fine (albeit a bit slow) up until we upgraded it and we have had no end of problems with it crashing, not loading properly, and being worse than useless

Well after about 3hours it got rid of it, when it came up it was called excorcism, so i think it was playing a scene from the Japanese version, when it was searching the amount of stuff i seen relating to porn was pretty unbeleiveable lol

Quote from mookie427 :

agreed, I have Norton and the computer was working fine (albeit a bit slow) up until we upgraded it and we have had no end of problems with it crashing, not loading properly, and being worse than useless

Are you using the official version or the cracked one? I've never seen a cracked version that really works yet and I always use the official one (not only anti-virus but everything else I use on PC )

As I mentioned before I use Norton since 1999 in four computers of mine, each one completely different from the other (1 for gaming (this one), 2 low end[celeron, FX5500, 1GB RAM etc] and 1 mid end), and I've never had any problem with it, even the times when I forgot to renew the license, it never caused any crash or something on my PC, it just said I had to renew the license, showed up a red sign on its icon tray and didn't scan anything until I purchased the new version.

Quote from pearcy_2k7 :

Well after about 3hours it got rid of it, when it came up it was called excorcism, so i think it was playing a scene from the Japanese version, when it was searching the amount of stuff i seen relating to porn was pretty unbeleiveable lol

What got rid of it? Good to see you solved your problem

Avast.

Shame on you Pearcy for not posting your problems on our forum! You know I could've fixed your problems easy, and got you set up with some decent protection, rather than that crappy McAfail and (No)Defender.

Meh well, i duno if its a coincidence but my computer has given up now, been good for 5 years, turned on fine after the scan but was turned off last night and now freezes on the sign in screen and stops making any noises like its not even trying to load it :\

If you can get into Safe Mode (F8), go to a command prompt and type chkdsk c: /f

Yeh i got intp safe mode, couldn't work out where to type that in though, still wouldn't sign in on safe mode though

It's possible the virus and/or removing the virus (which has infected delciate system files) has caused your PC to not want to boot up.

Now woud be the time I suggest you, somehow, figure how to do a system restore.

I believe (on my PC at least) if you spam F8 or something when it's booting up, it'll go into the recovery console.

try repairing your windows installation through the windows disk.

I don't want it to delete anything from my computer though, thanks for the help, i think it got somewhere, i got into safe mode and it signed in (sort of) made the noise etc which it didn't do before, then it asked me to click yes to continue in safe mode or no to use system restore, i clicked yes which just gave me a black screen with safe mode in all 4 corners of the screen. Im a little stuck where to go from here.

The fact it has 'safe mode' displayed in the corners is a good thing.

Sounds like the virus has changed the windows like.. background screen thing. Press pressing the windows key on the desktop.

I haven't got onto my desktop yet, or do you mean, log on, then press where it would be? Problem is it sounds like its booting up then just dies :\ Another thing, when running avast, it was searching and kept stoppping when it found something, i woke up half asleep and pressed delete all then it said are you sure and i pressed yes, maybe it deleted something it shouldn't have, but it started fine after the scan :\

I mean, when you're onto the desktop, press the Windows key on your keyboard (y'know the one that minimizes all your games -_- lol)

If it started fine after the scan, I don't think that you deleted any serious system problems. It could just be a coincidence or could be the virus having broken something.

What I do now suggest is that you get all important infomation, such as MSN contact lists, music, any school/work documents you may have and simply re-install Windows.

Something seems to be seriously iffy with your PC.

Well, its a 5 year old standard dell, problem is i can't get anything off it when i can't get onto anything, plus atm, all i want is my documents folder which is massive, hence why im thinking of sending it to the pc place to get my stuff off it and fix i/ buy a new one.

Hmm, well, it may cost a bit of money but they may even be able to fix it for you.

If you have another PC (I'm assuming this one you're using now), consider taking the hard-drive out, putting it into the Dell (remember to go into Bios and select the 'new' hard-drive as the one to boot), from, copy your documents folder across from the other hard-drive to the new one (obviously virus scan them), and that could be a way round the problem.

hum, ive now got onto my desktop in safe mode But not much use as there's nothing i can save my documents to, i don't have a one of those pen things or anything. This is my dads computer, so i don't want to rip it apart when i don't know what im doing, plus he uses it for work, aything goes wrong with it and he could literally loose thousands in a day

Oh, doesn't it have at least a CD-RW drive?

Assuming you mean CD drive? Yeh but i need atleast 10GB's would it fit onto a CD? Or am i going wrong here I know virtually nothing about computers so you'll have to go slowly and explain like your talking to a chimp

CD or DVD drive.

Simply use a program such as WinRar and select aproximatly 1.2gb of data. Compress it, and put the resulting .rar file onto the CD. Repeat until finished

Meh i don't understand why it logs on in safe mode but not normal I need some disc's, will go borrow some of my mate tomorrow, download winrar and put it onto dics, send my tower into the PC shop etc etc.

EDIT: Or could i upload the stuff to rapidshare and send the links, would that work?

The idea of safe-mode is for this exact problem. The PC will not boot because of one reason or another.

Safemode just basically means the PC only loads using the "fail-safe it will work" settings, often not loading any extra programs other than those needed to actually work the PC. Often freezes/crashes/reboots caused by viruses and the like do not show in safe-mode, because they're not being run. This is also why it's advisable to remove viruses in safe mode, because if parts of it are being run, they cannot be deleted propperly.

Don't think about uploading to rapidshare. That would probably take days. Since your computer is 5 years old, I doubt it has a DVD burner, only regular CD burner. So for storing 10GB you would need about 15 discs. If you can boot into Safe Mode with networking, download Malwarebytes and run it. It would also be useful if you could download HijackThis and post an output from the log in generates. Then we can check for suspicious programs that runs on startup.

Right im on the computer now, safe mode with networking, doing what you said now..

Great, hope it goes ok.

Post them Hijack this logs asap mate

(Tonight would be best, only takes 5 minutes to run and upload, and prolly after 10 minutes I coulda found a problem)