Primal Files-Tech Tales:You fool no one but yourself

We've all done it, attempted to pinch a penny, cut a corner, recycle parts from something old into something new. Now while when it comes to electronics you USUALLY can do that, if the problem is a hard drive that is about to die, 9 times out of 10 you're better buying a brand new hard drive. This lovely screen belongs to a customer's computer I was trying to reload Thursday night going into Friday morning. I had two computers to work on a Gateway desktop that had mystically decided that it didn't want to recognize Windows XP anymore and a Toshiba Laptop that the owner promised he had put a new, non dieing hard drive in. To be fair the real dagger in my heart was the Gateway, as I would find later it would require at least 7 hours to load windows 7 on that computer. 7 hours, a despicable task because usually I can get a computer reloaded within 2 hours, regardless of the operating system so the fact that I started at 8 o'clock and finished around 2:30 am did not sit well. To make matters worse, I still had to load drivers for it's Surveillance system card, which added ANOTHER 2 hours to my total, to say I was exhausted is an understatement.

The Toshiba I treated like a rotisserie chicken I set it and forget it, came back in about an hour and 30 minutes and I got a nasty gram "Windows 7 could not be loaded on to this computer, all changes that have been made have not been saved". Excuse me, I just wasted a good hour waiting on you while I was running back and forth with Captain Molasses who might as well be visiting Nanoock in his home(Nanoock of the North, joke my mother used to use when we left the door open in the winter back in Jersey). So of course I restart windows on the Toshiba and begin the load again only to get a little orange message that leads to that pop up box. Why me? The customer and I had just had a DETAILED conversation as to why he needed a different hard drive, about the importantance of using a good drive(didn't have to be new new, it just had to be WORKING). I almost wanted to call him and ask if he had taken the surname Flecher and had his cousin 'Dung been in for a visit, it didn't matter where he got the drive it just needed to work.

Technical difficulties

The Vaio is acting up, I know its a software issue, I know I need to do a system repair unfortunately I have no clue where my original XP disk is. That means to this either A) wipe and reload the whole shebang(which ain happening too much data and stuff on here) or else find a new PC at a decent price and slowly work on the vaio later. And by slowly I mean just that, do the HD upgrades I was planning to do, do the memory upgrades and possibly throw windows 7 on there.

Warning to People using Symantec family of software

Now I won't lie I have used the Symantec family of products for years(norton for those who don't know the company name) and usually they serve me well, hell my main computer has been running problem free for like 3 years now with Norton internet security 06 on it. Unfortunately at some point in time in the last 6 months some how those products got corrupted. Now initially I wasn't sure what it was, since most of my stuff worked I didn't really pay much attention.
I mean my laptop has vista on it and since most of the issues started on my laptop of course like everyone else what did I blame vista with it's nosey and dysfunctional self(I know I know now I have to apologize to vista) so after figuring out a few ways around said issues on the laptop at first I thought nothing of it. Then all the sudden my desktop started acting up. What do I mean by acting up:

New versions of programs that I already had installed were not working and could not access the internet.

Anything I downloaded from the internet either would not complete or else once downloaded could not finish their processes if internet access was required.

Programs that you already have loaded cannot download new updates or check for updates after a few weeks.

Now I know this could have been a lot of things, and with my laptop having vista on it some of it was gonna be blame on the invasive UAC(user access control) because it does have a tendency to block programs even if you have given them permission because "it knows better then you". But I had turned it off for a while with no luck in the programs I recently downloaded not working department, so it wasn't UAC. Now the other dead give away that it was something that loaded up at the start was the fact that everything worked in safe mode and I do mean everything. When I had IE 8 installed that worked, when I installed firefox because IE8 wasn't working that worked, google chrome worked in safe mode. Plus even Windows messenger couldn't upgrade itself in regular or safe mode(which I am gonna check now and see if that has changed but of course if it hasn't then I can't blame symantec for that). But as I said after testing a few theories and doing the go into safe mode and remove everything that was added after the IE8 upgrade AND removing every vista update since Jan 1st 2008. Also going into configuration mode and turning off damn near everything that wasn't running in safe mode well I had two choices: A full reload (and I have waaaaay to much data on my laptop to do that) or else find a way to completely remove norton.

Option B made the best sense at first now of course if that didn't work yep had to do the full reload, and trust me I would be waiting on that if I gotta reload my laptop anyway I might as well upgrade the hard drive I have an 80 gig in here now(seperated into to 30~ gig partitions) and if I have to reload it anyway I am going to go ahead and toss a 320 GB hard drive in here (or larger if I can find one) and have me a portable super porn machine. Yeah yeah I know how much porn does one man need allow me to put a few more hard drives in both my computers and we will see. Muahahahahahaa.

But this was just an update for those who may be running into a similar issue, if you are go to symantecs site and type in norton removal tool in the search bar. Pick the version of the remover for which ever version of norton you have(they do it by years, the first one does from 09-04 I think, and each one hops back one year from that starting date IE 08-03, 07-02 and so on and so forth) now once you do this don't forget to either reinstall norton(their suggestion depending on how long you had yours might be an option if your still within either your free trial or your subscription date if you decided to subscribe) or else find a new virus scanner program(if you know of a good one I would suggest you use it, I'm gonna look into a few myself). By the way if anything pops up trying to tell you you have a virus do not use it, it probably is a virus or malware. Most people hate pop ups so a reputable company is not gonna take the chance at turning you away.

Again this is not a Bash Symantec thread this is a if your having a similar problem this is your cheap solution so you don't have to go to best buy and have them charge you 100+ to fix it blog. Now if your not comfortable doing this go to best buy, or you local computer store that you trust and let them fix it. The benefit of the paid virus scanners is of course since your paying they tend to give you more comprehensive and user friendly products, the problem with them is their prices are high and if you lose your product code, or registration number their gonna want more money again.

I hope this helps if you had or run into a similar problem