WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Microsoft Windows operating system, and software for Windows platform, including QuickTime Player and iTunes for Windows. We also discuss topics about Microsoft Corp.

Moderators: Josh, Don_HH2K, Mandrake

WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby geffr » Sat 07 Jul, 2012 6:49 pm

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
User avatar
geffr
silver member
silver member
 
Posts: 262
Joined: Sun 07 Mar, 2004 7:24 am

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby James » Sat 07 Jul, 2012 7:24 pm

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)
James
User avatar
James
diamond member
diamond member
 
Posts: 2932
Joined: Sat 13 Jul, 2002 12:10 am

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby geffr » Sat 07 Jul, 2012 8:09 pm

James wrote: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
User avatar
geffr
silver member
silver member
 
Posts: 262
Joined: Sun 07 Mar, 2004 7:24 am

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby Antony » Sat 07 Jul, 2012 11:54 pm

Sorry to hear about your trouble. And thank you for letting us know about Greatis Reg Run.
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3
User avatar
Antony
diamond member
diamond member
 
Posts: 14926
Joined: Tue 18 Jun, 2002 11:36 pm
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby Fulvio » Fri 20 Jul, 2012 1:24 pm

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
A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong
~ Henrik Ibsen
WinXP, SP3, 512 MB, SM2.17.1, FF21, TB17.O.5, IE8.0, Google Chrome 26, Ghostwall , Kingsoft5.6, JRE1.7_21.
User avatar
Fulvio
Moderator
Moderator
 
Posts: 12000
Joined: Wed 19 Jun, 2002 10:08 am

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby James » Fri 20 Jul, 2012 2:42 pm

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
James
User avatar
James
diamond member
diamond member
 
Posts: 2932
Joined: Sat 13 Jul, 2002 12:10 am

Re: WARNING "Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box

Postby Fulvio » Tue 24 Jul, 2012 12:41 pm

By the way, the title says:
Norton Power Eraser" Trashed My XP Box
. Which Box?
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:14.0) Gecko/20120715 Firefox/14.0.1 SeaMonkey/2.11
A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong
~ Henrik Ibsen
WinXP, SP3, 512 MB, SM2.17.1, FF21, TB17.O.5, IE8.0, Google Chrome 26, Ghostwall , Kingsoft5.6, JRE1.7_21.
User avatar
Fulvio
Moderator
Moderator
 
Posts: 12000
Joined: Wed 19 Jun, 2002 10:08 am


Return to Windows (and Microsoft talk)

Who is online

Registered users: Google [Bot]

cron