Hi. I'm new, but my machine ain't.

Hi. Sorry if this is a bit long; I'm just chronically wordy; it's my greatest weakness as a writer.

I'm running an old POS with Windows 2K professional on it. I have two problems:

1. I am trying to remove a copy of Norton 2006. The antivirus subscription is expired, making it a good time to replace it with some freeware (e.g. AVG or AVast) that I'm hoping might be a bit more reliable. However, Norton Removal tool is not cooperating and I followed all the instructions on the Symantec site, as well as everything I could find here.

2. I have this bizarre problem where, my web browser periodically starts scrolling up and down rapidly. I haven't found a pattern in this behavior; it seems to happen at random. I've run everything, including Read & Run Me first (except for one program that gave me a warning that some systems don't survive the cleaning. If anything would go wrong, it'd be this heap). Nothing found anything. I'm starting to wonder if it might be a hardware problem--a short in my similarly aging keyboard, but my system keeps running low on virtual memory too, and I keep finding something called "UPS" running, when I don't have a UPS.

It doesn't help that, as my username indicates, I am a bit geeky but in an area (anthropology) that is really not very useful in this situation.
I have a couple semesters of programming and a passing (if fairly out-of-date) familiarity with Unix and Linux, as well as a bit of skill doing basic user maintenance on Windows boxes, but I'm really stumped here.

Where do I start? I'm guessing this should be two threads but I have no idea where (2) would even go, and I don't know what other steps I should take before I post (1).

Thanks,

 

first off :wave and welcome to MG's..

1. re norton start a new thread HERE in the software forum. the guys in there will help you with that.

2. you say you went through Read & Run Me first. you realy should of posted in the Malware Removal forum and attached the logs so the guys in there could see if your system is realy clean i would advise you to do that to make sure..

good luck:major

 

Thanks all and sorry for the delay in returning; I'm only here a couple days a week (which is why the machine I have here is so decrepit).

No, I haven't tried add/remove programs. Should I?

Here's what I did try and what happened when I did:
I tried the Norton Removal tool and got an error message saying it was out-of-date and to click on a link that it provided (http://www.symantec.com/nrtexpired). The link led to a to Symantec help page.

The first solution the page offers was make sure the system date was right. I did and it was.

The next option they offered was to edit the registry and remove this registry key. I backed up the registry, went into the registry, looked for the key, and did not find it. I exited without making any changes.

I came here and read up, finding something about how running it in safe mode might work. I tried to run it in safe mode and got an error message saying it won't run in safe mode.

 

Thanks. I'll try this one and return with a report of how it went.

ETA: Still getting the same error message. Maybe it's got something to do with the ancientness of my machine?
Alternately: My copy of NAV itself is expired & I waited for this to happen before making the switch. Was this a mistake? Could it be refusing to let me uninstall it because it's expired?
Thanks again

 

I found the problem. I must have had an old version on my machine and the machine was failing to replace it. I deleted it manually and re-downloaded it, which worked.

Odd and probably idiosyncratic to my ancient machine but included on the off-chance that it might be useful to some future user.

Thanks all. You guys rock.

-Culturegeek

P.S. Sorry for the late reply; I spent on spring break volunteering out of state.