I apologize for the hiccup Sunday night – I don’t know why it double posted, but it did. Wait, I think I have an idea – my computer has gone all wonky on me. And yes, that’s the technical term for what it’s done.
Programs won’t stay open. Links weren’t being opened. I couldn’t update Norton AV, so I tried reinstalling it, which resulted in an error message telling me to contact the sysadmin to grant me access to the program. Excuse me? I AM the frickin’ sysadmin! Give me acess NOW! I seem to recall hearing of someone with similar problems recently, but I can’t remember if it was something major (like immenent system failure) or minor (a virus). It’s entered “Do Not Attempt To Fix” territory, and I may have to take it to an actual professional on the weekend. Because I’m in over my head, yo.
In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have tried anything less than an hour before I had to be at curling (which we lost due to a spectacular second end for the other team), and shouldn’t have tried to fix things when I was dead tired afterwards.
So I’m just letting you know where I’ll be for the next few days – posting at work on my lunch break.
(Slighly off-topic: I watched part of Iron Chef America on Sunday night. Yay for finally finding out who Bobby Flay is! Anyways, FoolBlog has a hilarious “what if…” list of scenarios featuring Sunday night’s theme ingredient – buffalo. (I know – WTF?!))
Hi Rebecca, I work in a library, and one of my hats has Computer Tech Support on it. I’m having very similar problems on a public machine. It is located in an affliate library and has no security on it (that will change soon) and was bombarded by virus and spyware. I have it all cleaned up, but still can’t get Norton AV to update. Message says to make sure I’m connected to the internet to do liveupdate – I AM connected to the internet, stupid message. I still am searching using regedit to find the answer, though I do think it deals with weird ip’s in my Host folder(s) (don’t know where those are yet). I’ll let you know if I discover anything. Of course, if you figure it out, email me. Steve shurd@neflin.org
Herro!
Perchance have you had the opportunity to reboot the puter then log in using safe-mode with network support, then running the virus update? The creatures stopping you from updating in normal mode would maybe me more lenient if you were in safe mode, cause it’s “safe”, supposedly. Hit f5 when your puter reboots to go into the menu to tell it to reboot into safe mode with network support.
Orrrrr
You can manually update them (on a norton site):
Here: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/download.html
Or here, using the Intelligent Updator (daily updates of virus definitions):
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nav.nsf/docid/1998082013035306
Steve: I’ll let you know how it works out. Norton (before I uninstalled it) would run the virus scan on the hard drive, but it wasn’t updating the virus definitions. I had it set to do automatic LiveUpdates on Mondays and Fridays, but it hadn’t been doing so for a while – like, since I got back from holidays, at least. (Or when I did run it, the program would tell me that LiveUpdate was already running, you idiot (it seemed to say) when it was clearly not running at all.)
Pender: Yo!
I’ve tried to run the program in safe-mode several times, but to no avail. It’s not that Norton isn’t updating, it’s that I open the program, the window opens, and then disappears after 10 seconds or so. The same thing happens if I try to open regedit or any other window – it says open for a few seconds and then closes. However, thanks for the links – I will try them when I get home, while glaring menacingly at the computer in the vain hope that I can frighten it into working.