My roommate , somehow, messed up his laptop today , now , he isn;t the most computer savvy person , and has NO idea how he did it , everything worked perfect last night.

He told me that something from his norton antivirus popped up , and he just clicked ok without reading it much , but he thought it said something about ports?

Now his browser cannot connect to the internet, messengers work , but not the browser , i tried both IE and firefox.

I disabled his internet security , and everything was back to normal , except now his internet security is turned off.

What else can i try/ check?

 

You might try running system restore... That would be my first effort if it is Windos XP.

 

Check his anti virus log to see what he did, he probably denied the browser access to the Internet. Possibly he has Zone alarm and disabled his browser from Internet access in that program.

Just a guess as I don't know what programs he has installed, but each of those two have user CP panels that you can check to see which programs have access to the Internet.

 

What he said.
I had a similar problem when I downloaded Spybot. It wiped out all of my drivers/ports on my laptop. I had to take it in to a shop and have the drivers re-installed.

 

Ok , i restored back 2 days ,to monday , now i can leave the internet security ON , but i have to disable the personal firewall to make the browser work.

Before the restore i had to disable both.

 

Antivirus or Internet Security? They ARE different. If it was in fact Norton Internet Security (NIS), I suspect a routine message within the firewall popped up prompting your friend for a decision. The questions is, what decision?

NIS probably informed the user that an application was about to access the Internet and wanted to know if it should allow it OR it informed the user that an application was about to access a specific port and wanted to know if that port should be disabled. If everything else works except Internet access via a browser, look for someplace within NIS to enable port 80.

The following link is to a web site that has the NOS manual in PDF format. Peruse through it to figure out where to look to either allow browser access or reenable a specific port. Of course, if it was a legal copy, your friend could always call Symantec for tech support help over the phone. It would be much quicker.

http://www.cogeco.com/files/pdf/internetconn_userguides/Norton_Internet_Security_2002_for_Windows_2000_NT_ Me_98_XP.pdf

BTW,if your friend is operating Windows XP SP2, the question comes to mind, why is he running NIS? XP has a firewall built into it that is way better. I hope he isn't running both firewalls at the same time. All it would accomplish is taking up a whole bunch of cpu clock cycles and SLOW down his system considerably without giving any additional benefit. One firewall on the same system is more than enough. I would suggest disabling NIS, keep the anti-virus aspect of it only, and use the XP firewall instead. My 2 cents worth.

 

I have NIS and use the firewall with it, because I have always heard that the XP one aint so great...

Now I'm wondering...

 

Well , for the moment , it is working again , i don't know exactly what i did , but it works , port 80 was enabled all along , i checked that.

I went into the personal fire wall and played with the settings , and it works , for now.

It appears to be a whole Norton suite , it has personal and internet firewalls , antivirus , parental control , yadda yadda yadda.

 

There may be a problem with Norton. I've been having issue with my Norton and I just dumped it last night and went with a new anti-virus software called AVG. Its free, and several guys her @ work have been running it with no problems, they say its better then the Norton or McAfee. I had to dis-able Norton just to download a new program and to get the program to work.

 

I've been running Norton since I got the new laptop 3 months ago, and it has worked great for me. No problems... Yet.

But so far I am liking the setup.

 

As a consultant, the MOST unexplained network problems I get are when a customer buys Norton internet security and installs it. His network stops working and for some reason they don't connect the Norton to the problem. I advise them that since they're behind a router firewall (if you're not then you're asking for trouble) they don't need NIS and to disable the firewall and their network comes back as if by magic.

This product is poorly documented and sold to people who don't understand the implications of closing TCP/IP ports. The firewall that comes with Windows XP SP2 is fine and opens up the proper ports needed for whatever networking you're doing so Nortton is a waste of money and causes more problems than it solves.

Edwin

 

Well , i just about had to throw the thing out the window tonight , it was working fine , and it just shut off , seemingly , yet the power light was on , but nothing would function , almost as if it went into hibernation mode, i ended up having to pull the battery to get it to come out of it , ran the scandisk on startup, came back fine.

I sorted through msconfig , and turned on selective startup , and turned off all the garbage he had put on the computer. Then i went through control panel to add/remove programs , and got rid of all the other garbage i could find, that took me almost an hour, restarted several times , ran a virus scan , and defragment is running now , but it is already running WAY faster than it used to. Any other suggestions?

 

i have 7 computers and have used trend co norton macafee panda and others. switched one machine to AVG several months ago, have since installed it on all my machines and think it is the best i have ever used

 

Norton HUGE resource hog, get rid of it the PC will run like new

 

I will pass that advise on.

Thanks guys!