New Windows Update Problem

[Graueradler]

Is anyone else having computer problems that appear to be co-incident with installing the latest Windows XP update? My computer is taking forever (many minutes) to start up but seems to have reasonable speed when it is finally up and running. I tried restoring to a point ahead of the update and it came back telling me that the restore to the selected date could not be accomplished. I've run the Norton systemworks and it said it fixed a bunch of things but I don't see any improvement. When it is creeping, I see the drive access light being on nearly continuosly but CPU usage is low.

 

[Brian Austin]

Norton Systemworks isn't helping here. If ever there was a program that should be kept from a Windows, that's it.

I've updated and had no issues.

 

[Graueradler]

Norton Systemworks isn't helping here. If ever there was a program that should be kept from a Windows, that's it.

So is there a trouble shooting utility that you would recommend in place of Norton?

The computer has a physical problem. Bios is not detecting the secondary drives. I'll open it up today and check for loose cables. If that isn't the case, I'll canibalize another old computer and see if I can make one out of two. If that doesn't work, it is time for a new one.

 

[whirlaway]

When it gets slow like that run task manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL) and see which program or process is consuming the CPU cycles and/or disk I/O.

 

[wsuffa]

So is there a trouble shooting utility that you would recommend in place of Norton?

The computer has a physical problem. Bios is not detecting the secondary drives. I'll open it up today and check for loose cables. If that isn't the case, I'll canibalize another old computer and see if I can make one out of two. If that doesn't work, it is time for a new one.

Norton Systemworks is evil. It adds all kinds of crap to your machine, and starts a lot of it at startup. There is no reason that Ghost, etc, etc. needs to start every time you start the machine. And it's h*ll to remove.

I had a version of systemworks that gummed itself up and wouldn't update the virus defs. Norton's solution? Uninstall the software and reinstall. But wait, the uninstall failed and trashed the uninstall program. There is a manual removal process - it takes about 4 hours and about 1000 registry entry removals to accomplish.

Most of the useful stuff in Norton is either included in Windows or is available in other products (some of 'em free).

 

[NC Pilot]

Is anyone else having computer problems that appear to be co-incident with installing the latest Windows XP update? My computer is taking forever (many minutes) to start up but seems to have reasonable speed when it is finally up and running. I tried restoring to a point ahead of the update and it came back telling me that the restore to the selected date could not be accomplished. I've run the Norton systemworks and it said it fixed a bunch of things but I don't see any improvement. When it is creeping, I see the drive access light being on nearly continuosly but CPU usage is low.

Yep, My computer started doing all sorts of wierd things after it installed a Window's update. I could not access the hard drive from Word, Excel and several other programs. Problem went away after installing the next update.

 

[Graueradler]

The problem with my computer seems to have been an intermittently bad hard drive. It was on the secondary controller and used for back-up. I noticed that neither drive (CD and HDD) on the secondary controller was being recognized by bios on start up when the computer acted up. It wasn't just a missing drive though. It really affected the computer. After removing the hard drive, the problem seems to be gone. Since it was intermittent, I can't be sure yet but after several start ups today, things are looking good. I put the suspect drive in another computer as the primary master and it showed up as intermittent there when I tried to install an OS on it. First it was there and then it wasn't.