I need XP service pack 1 back

OK 1 down. Your internet works – that’s a plus!!

Now for firewall. In your taskbar, in an empty area, can you please right-click and choose Task Manager. When the screen opens, choose the Processes tab. Please scroll to the right until you can see the “Description” column. If you click one time on the Description heading it should put them in alphabetical order. Then scroll down and tell me if you have anything Norton or Symantec showing as a running process.

If not, can you please go to Start / Programs and try to launch Norton manually? If it works great! If not, please tell me what happens. It’s possible the service was simply disabled with all the installs/uninstalls.

If it does show in your running processes then just let me know.

Norton is generally something you have to pay for. If you have a strong preference for it I certainly understand, but I will be honest that most people I know do not use Norton/Symantec on their personal computers. There are other options that are totally free and work as well or better than the paid firewalls and anti-virus programs. If you are interested in using a free alternative please let me know and I can recommend one for you.

Is that StmWSC.exe or SymWSC.exe? The latter is definitely related to Norton AntiVirus.

If you paid for Norton, you should be able to login to the website and re-download the product. You may need to remove the existing version but you should be able to re-download from the web if you have a paid subscription. I would login and check to be sure this is the case before removing anything if you want to try and salvage it but it sounds like something has become corrupted with all the system changes recently. You could also try going to add/remove programs and see if there is a Repair option for your Norton product. I remove Norton as soon as I get a machine so I cannot say if they offer Repair or not. If they do – give it a shot before changing anything else.

My suggestion for free programs would be Comodo Firewall and AVG Free (which is really free and will not prompt you to pay. If you try the full version it will after the trial period.)

If you decide you want to replace Norton you will need to go to the Symantec site and run the Norton Removal Tool as Norton is extremely difficult to fully remove from your system and that is the easiest way to do it.

Let me know how the repair/re-download looks or if you want to replace Norton. Then we can talk about your email situation.

My last post back starts with:

Is that StmWSC.exe or SymWSC.exe?

If you can’t see it we need to take a step back and reconsider the possible situation here. There may be more going on than originally anticipated.

That is definitely related to Norton Antivirus so something is running on the machine with regard to Norton.

Did you try logging into the Symantec site to see if you can redownload since you have the paid version?

Ven0m I tend to agree with you. If Mistyfog wants to, we’ll eradicate Norton and install AVG free and Comodo. If we do that perhaps you’ll assist with the Comodo setup?? Please??

However, Mistyfog has paid for Norton and indicated a desire to get the year’s worth of it. I can understand. However, if we can’t get a clean download from the net, I’m really going to suggest we just go with the other options and move on.

Having no protection at the moment is a far bigger risk than losing a few dollars for the Norton in my opinion.

Mistyfog you’ll have to let us know what you want to do now.

Download the following but DO NOT install them yet:
Comodo Firewall
AVG Free

Go to the Symantec site and run the Norton Removal Tool. You should be prompted for reboot after using the tool.

As soon as the reboot finishes install AVG so that you get your protection up and running for anti-virus.

Then install Comodo. As I said, I don’t use Comodo, but it is very highly recommended as a software firewall by many people I know. You may need to tweak the permissions of some of your programs, but it shouldn’t be too difficult.

I would still urge you to consider Service Pack 3 for security reasons. And we can talk about email solutions after you have anti-virus and firewall installed. Let me know if you encounter any issues.

OK, I was trying to get you the standalone firewall, as opposed to the one with antivirus as a part of it. But for the sake of simplicity let’s do this.

Just do one download – instead of AVG for antivirus we’ll just do the Comodo firewall + antivirus all in one. I generally don’t like all in one solutions, but since Comodo is a good firewall we’ll give it a shot and see how it goes.

So you don’t need AVG then.

Go ahead and do the download, then the Norton Removal Tool, reboot and install Comodo and let me know how it goes.