Strange happenings with Microsoft

[desdawg]

I finally got it uninstalled. Now I am concerned about trying to download anything else. Just let Norton do it's job. I suppose I should turn the automatic update thing back on.

[John_C]

Desdawg,

I am talking out of school here because I don't do windows but Mac has a utility called Time Machine... basically it backs up your hard drive (to another HD) and updates it hourly.  You have the ability to restore your configuration to anytime in the past.

My daughter tells me that PC's have a similar utility, although I don't know what they call it.  Seems like this would be  a good time to use it, if it's actually there and set up.

Just a thought....  good luck

[MountainDon]

Personal experiences may vary, but I have used Norton since my first PC, a 386DX machine. I've never had bad experiences, other than a problem uninstalling a version once, so I could install a newer one. I had to use a special downloaded tool from Norton to clean out everything. I thought that was a poor way of having to go about the process. After all it was their own product.

I also run Windows Defender ever since it came out as Windows Antispyware.

I let automatic update download but not install. If you are on dialup you'd likely be best off to have it advise you when an update is available and then after a week or so, if nothing bad is reported on windowssecrets.com, go ahead and pickup your time to D/L and install.

[desdawg]

I set it to notify me when updates are available. Then I can pick and choose. If you read that article on windowssecrets.com Explorer 7.0 will be forcefed through the updates. And it will come through no matter which security selection you make regarding updates. That is what started all of this to begin with. First my browser wouldn't open a page then later that day it opened to Explorer 7.0 with a MSN homepage by default and MSN search engine as the default application. So I was hi-jacked by Microsoft.

[John_C]

Can you just disable or remove IE  and go to Firefox or Opera as a browser? 

I got rid of Microsoft software about 10 years ago.  Far fewer problems.  Even when my daughter had to work in a Microsoft office environment she used Open Office. Complete file and cross platform compatibility and it's freeware.

[apaknad]

i don't know if this helps anyone but i removed spybot on the recomendation of my cable co.(comcast) because it interfered with e-mail and home page.

[glenn kangiser]

They changed the wuauclt (windows update automatic update client) to mandatory and no way to turn it off - almost destroyed my computer.  It would hardly run and I finally found TUT - The Ultimate Troubleshooter program that would shut it down and keep it away until reboot - then start over again. 

It finally got to where I have little trouble with it, and I remove it whenever it reappears but - yes - Microsoft was the source of the problem and it was a bear to kill.

This process took many weeks to locate and correct.

This helped - it can replace task manager and tells much more as well as being able to kill processes.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx