Help, im frozen and cant get started!

[rabbitrob]

Hi all! Hope you can help. I was tiring to clean out my friends system that was running slow after a year of Internet. He had Norton 2003 on his system and like many people, didn't realize that he needed to subscribe to keep his machine protected. With that, I dl AVG free anti virus program, which BTW , i run on my system with great results. After installing AVG, I then tried to remove Norton, it would go through the whole removal. I then restarted his system and Windows went into that black window with safe mode, safe mode with networking, recent safe configuration and normal windows start up screen. No matter which one i select, the system just restarts and goes back to that screen. I do notice a fast flash of a blue screen with some writing on it when i try to use safe mode.
Can anyone help me out, getting past this without having to reinstall windows. I believe there is a conflict between the two anti virus programs tiring to start up.

Thanks,
Rabbitrob

[JAM_Siko]

It could be possible norton deleted a "needed" system file whenever u uninstalled it.....Norton is good, but it integrates into your system and pretty much takes over.

JAM SIKO

[MartyMcFly]

Try last known good config, then windows repair

[rabbitrob]

First of let me tell you this, these forums are fabulous, much learned info here, two thumbs up to all that have answered people with issues, glad to see there is still some good in the world! :mrgreen:

Now as for the problem, i bet it was Norton, I don't think it fully uninstalled and i think adding AVG just made it more complicated. I have tried to use the last know, but like others here on the forums, it just keeps rebooting no matter which one i select. The blue screen flies by and no way to tell what it could be saying. As for the repair, do i need the windows CD that came with the machine or can i use another windows ( both XP) the reason, his CD is a day away and I would have to go get it.

Any more help on this would so much be greatly appreciated!

Thanks
Rabbitrob

[kccomputerdr]

Most virus creators have designed their virus to take over your Norton. To save many weeks of headaches you might want to take the loss & start from scratch. Much faster & you'll be happy with a smooth running computer.

[rabbitrob]

OMG I cant believe it! Ok, first off, thanks everyone for suggestions and all.

The system is back up and running, heres what I did:

As suggested, i took the HDD from the broken PC and installed it into my computer as the slave, assuming I would be able to take the needed files off of the HDD before I reinstalled Windows. When I started my system up, my Windows XP fixed the issues the other "slave" HDD had and then my system booted up after making the scans. I then shut down my system and changed the slave HDD back to master and reinstalled it back into the other machine. To make sure things were ok, i booted up in safe mode, it went thru the normal lines, it then stopped as it had been doing, then after about 5 seconds, it booted up normally into safe mode. I then checked out things in my msconfig, made sure nothing from Norton was going to reload and restarted the machine normally.

Booooooom! Up it went flawlessly and I am able to make backups, just in case i ever need to reinstall Windows on this machine( learned my lesson :) )

Here is a bit of info about the two machines:

Both are Emachines

My model is a newer one, but both run XP

The master HDD is 80 gig ( my machine)
The Slave HDD is 40 gig ( The HDD with the issues)

I hope the others in this wonderful forum read this and they can try this out with the same sussess.

Once again, I so much appreciate all that poted here and "great job" to the people that have this forum(s) up and runnign with tons of helpful information!

Rabbitrob

[kccomputerdr]

Congrats. all computers have minds of their own & require new & sometimes very weird teqniques to fix them. it's always a joy to figure them out.