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Norton Personal Firewall Disabled My Computer!

I bought a computer a while back and finally got it hooked up on the web recently. Everything was working fine until I let the Auto-Update feature of Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall 2003 run. When going through the install, I hit the button to auto-scan for files in the system. Well, about 250 or so came up as needing or wanting network access. I started to configure a few of them. The default was "automatic" on the settings though, so I didn't set them all. I had second thoughts about letting the update continue. I think I hit Cancel and Finish after that.

Now, NOTHING works on the system INCLUDING Norton Personal Firewall. Oh, it's running in the background, but I can't do anything with it.

I can't get into Word, Excel, MSIE, or even Notepad. I can't run cmd from the start menu, so I can fix things that way. I can bring up the "About" portion of Norton Personal Firewall, but tring to bring up the program itself does nothing. (I think it disabled itself.) I can't uninstall it. I can't even run add/remove programs.

I'm at a loss as to what to do.

The computer is running Windows XP w/SP 2.

Any suggestions?

Reply to
me
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You installed NPF 2003. Then you did an auto-update. Auto-update for WHAT? Just signatures? Or were there program updates, too? Program updates don't initiate an auto-scan to check files for infections. So you must've decided to run a scan afterward.

What does "can't get into" mean? That the programs won't load (so you see them in Task Manager), that they load but are somehow unusable, or that you can't even initiate their load (because you can't use their shortcuts in the Start menu)? How can you possibly get an "About" window from NPF without it already running?

What happens when you reboot into Safe Mode? If that works, wipe the application rules defined in NPF and change it from automatic to manual as to allowing a program to have network access.

Reply to
Vanguard

you can use Knoppix, and boot from CD, than save what ever you want.

Anders

Reply to
Anders

Does Knoppix support NTFS?

Reply to
Lou
[snip]

Take the computer to someone who knows how to extract any files from the hard drive that you may want to keep. Then get them to wipe the drive and reinstall XP SP2 for you. When you get the computer back, make sure it has all updates from Windows Update. Make sure that a virus scanner is installed and kept up to date. Consider an external firewall box. A cheap box designed to share an Internet connection between multiple computers is better than nothing, even if you have only one computer. Forget about installing software firewalls but do make sure that the XP built in firewall is turned on.

Jason

Reply to
Jason Edwards

Yes it can read but not write.

Reply to
Anders

Have you actually tried booting from the install cd and doing a restore ?

Reply to
atec

me,

If System Restore was turned "on" during this process, restore to a point prior to the Norton install.

If you are unfamiliar with System Restore, either post back for instructions or use Google and do a search.

Reply to
Sir_George

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