Norton renders Windows ME inoperable

agraha · May 10, 2004

Hi, everyone. Thanks in advance for any help with the following problem.

My mother's computer suddenly stopped booting up, and she has discovered that the problem arises only when Norton anti-virus is active. She has a Gateway with a Pentium lll processor and 127.0 MB RAM. The OS is Microsoft Windows ME 4.90.3000, and she has an up-to-date Norton/Symantec subscription. After a few weeks of working with Gateway tech service, she finally regained use of her computer by disabling Norton. Otherwise, neither the Gateway people nor Symantec tech support has been very helpful.

I had the same problem with a laptop running ME a couple of years ago; my solution was to take the thing offline entirely and carefully screen any files I use on it. This is a cop-out that my mum cannot afford -- she needs to go online/e-mail with that computer.

Is this a problem unique to Win ME?? Is the answer to switch to another OS? or is there some way to make Norton and ME co-exist?

Sorry if this is a redundant posting -- I did see the other Norton postings (for ex. about computers taking ages to shut down when Norton was active) -- but it seemed to me that the no-booting symptom merited a new thread.

Many thanks,
A

agraha · May 11, 2004

RAM shopping

Thanks very much, Cowboy. As you suggest, I will start by having my mum install more RAM and take it from there.

Any special advice on how to add RAM (as in: hardware type & MB amount) to a rather elderly computer? or will the average computer store be able to provide sensible shopping advice?

I still don't understand why things went smoothly for 4 months before the shutdown, nor why the insufficent memory problem did not occur to Gateway/Symantec tech support??? Are Major Geeks the only ones who know that Norton takes loads of memory?

Thanks again,
A

chaslang · May 11, 2004

agraha said:

Thanks very much, Cowboy. As you suggest, I will start by having my mum install more RAM and take it from there.

Any special advice on how to add RAM (as in: hardware type & MB amount) to a rather elderly computer? or will the average computer store be able to provide sensible shopping advice?

I still don't understand why things went smoothly for 4 months before the shutdown, nor why the insufficent memory problem did not occur to Gateway/Symantec tech support??? Are Major Geeks the only ones who know that Norton takes loads of memory?

Thanks again,
A
Click to expand...

Many of the older Gateway PIII's could only add up to 384Mb of RAM. You need to check your manuals or on-line for your mother board. There are limits.

As far as why all of a sudden you ran into problems, it could be the straw that broke the camels back. Each update of Norton (and McAfee for that matter) becomes more and more of a resource hog. You may have hit the breaking point. On the otherhand there could be something else going on with some spyware. For safety download and install Ad-Aware and SpyBot S&D and then update them while on line:

Ad-Aware:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download506.html

Spybot:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download2471.html

The run them and clean what they find.

The best advice for you is still what Cowboy told you. Un-install Norton completely and go for Avast or AVG. Both free and availble here on MG's. See:

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download1968.html

and

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download886.html

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Norton renders Windows ME inoperable

agraha Private E-2

agraha Private E-2

chaslang MajorGeeks Admin - Master Malware Expert Staff Member