WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

[geffr]

Norton has a free rootkit remover out called "Norton Power Eraser". DO NOT use it on XP. Totally corrupted the registry (& that was NOT due to finding a rootkit). I've been trying to repair the machine for about 4 hours so far. Do NOT use this POS. As it is I currently can not get into Windows on my main computer other than with the recovery console through the Windows CD.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:12.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/12.0

[James]

Geeze. Thanks for the warning. I hope you can get it repaired. Sorry to hear about your troubles but appreciate the warning.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; Trident/5.0; BOIE9;ENUSMSE)

[geffr]

Geeze. Thanks for the warning. I hope you can get it repaired. Sorry to hear about your troubles but appreciate the warning.

It appears to be fixed after about 5 hours of work. Right now I am currently doing major back ups before doing a cold reboot to confirm.

After trying everything i could find in the MS knowledge base & the MS official forums (& a couple other net forums) in my case the fix was something I forgot I had; I use a registry management program (which I swear by) called Greatis Reg Run. It has a registry restore feature which I didn't even think about as I've never used the feature before in all the years I've owned it. It SEEMS to have fixed the issues in about 10 seconds.

I won't feel totally safe until doing the cold boot just in case Norton put some sort of weird hook in an ini file that will cause the issue to recur, but I THINK I'm ok.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:13.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/13.0.1

[Antony]

Sorry to hear about your trouble. And thank you for letting us know about Greatis Reg Run.

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[Fulvio]

I won't feel totally safe until doing the cold boot just in case Norton put some sort of weird hook in an ini file

I would not use Norton, even if they paid me.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120715 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11

[James]

I think you've been affected by online comments from disgruntled users especially from versions older than 2010. For the past three years Norton has been rated at or near the top of all paid-for AV suites by CA Comparatives, an independent testing lab and the best in the business. It has very little impact on your system and is easy to remove. I know this since I've been a Norton user for three years and out of curiosity have removed and re-installed it several times.

That doesn't mean that I will continue with Norton. I'm seriously thinking of going free this year. BUT I also did not want to let this comment pass since I see this sort of thing all the time on discussion forums. I'm speaking from experience...three-years' worth and not from someone else's problems or issues. Furthermore, my wife has it installed on her computer and has had no issues. In fact, the suite has served us both well so I'd be remiss if I did not defend it.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:14.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/14.0.1

[Fulvio]

By the way, the title says:

Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

. Which Box?

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