PC troubles after uninstall of Norton Internet Security 2005

As the description says, I uninstalled norton after i had re-purchase the license for it. After i uninstalled the program several other programs decided not to work anymore. Windows Media Player, Firefox, Itunes Updates, And i have no in-PC search option, i can bring it up, but there are no areas to type in what im searching for. After i uninstalled everything i installed a new Virus program, Avast Professional, i dont believe this has to do with the problem because the problems were happening before i got the new virus protection. Any help on how to make these programs work or what could've happened would be very helpful.

Norton, in its attempt to provide excellent protectioon against malware and unauthorized changes to the users machine, embeds itself quite deeply into the Windows operating system. Due to the deep tangle of Norton application and Operating System (OS) files, if Norton itself fails or during the removal of Norton, certain of the machine's OS files may be at risk of damage.

Your machine may have experienced such damage.

Ordinarily when an application (such as Media Player, FireFox, or iTunes) fails, the first best course of action is to Uninstall - ReInstall the application. Doing so will insure that all the required components of the application are made available via the installation, and all the application interactions with the OS are established in a variety of places including the Systems32 folder and the Registry.

However, if a more pervasive (system wide) change occurs, then reinstalling a single or several application(s) may not succeed, because the corresponding OS files and connections may themselves be unavailable or damaged.

Unfortunately, you may need to Repair your Operating System (OS) (in your case XP?).
Then it may be additionally necessary to Uninstall-ReInstall each of the affected Applications.

It might be possible to "isolate" the specific OS files and entries that may have become damaged, but there are likely a large number of incidents of them.

If you can provide additional information about the "specific" errors that you are encountering, it may be possible to offer recommendations to fix each of them.

Otherwise, begin the repair of your OS in the least destructive manner possible first.

Consider the following order of actions:

– Run DiskCleanup to Remove remnant and junk temporary files
– Remove temporary internet files via Control Panel - Internet Options
– Defrag your Hard Drive
(sometimes the above three procedures can clear and junk and disorganization that is frustrating the System.)

– Run Windows File Protection - System File Checker - to restore any OS missing or corrupt files (run takes 20-40 minutes)
– Run CheckDisk to repair any errors in the File Structure and any bad-sectors on the Hard drive (run takes 40 minutes to a few hours)
== Uninstall-Reinstall each of the affected Applications

If problems persist:
– Consider a Repair Installation of your OS - takes about 40 minutes to an hour.
– Consider Re-format and Clean Reinstall of your OS and all the drives and applicaitons Takes 2-3 hours to run, but involves loss of all data and finding all your device drivers which may take longer.

Some folks jump to the botttom two steps, considering the early and intermediate steps to be a waste of time. However, the further down the list you get, the more potentially destructive the procedure can be to your important documents and files and to the current setup and feel that you've created in the arrangement of your computer the way you like it.

The owner/user of a computer should always keep important documents, media, and files securely backed up. If you have not done so, do so now, before you begin any of these repair steps.

Keep us posted with your progress.
If you have questions about performing any of the steps, ask before you start.

Best Regards

Everything you have told me so far has been a great in helping me further understand what's going on. As for naming out the specfic errors im encountering, I can't. Only Because I don't get error messages or anything along those lines, things just dont work. (e.g. I select WMP, my mouse spins as if waiting for the program to begin, than stops an nothing happens.) The only item I can name the specific problem is for Itunes. The program itself works, the point at which i get any sort of error is when trying to update, albeit not the most important thing, I know it follows along with the other problems I've been having. The error message is "A script is required for this intall to complete could nt be run." That is the only error message I get. I've run and performed the first three steps already to no avail, I've tried re-installing all of the programs, yet again to no avail. Ive run checkdsk, it found registry problems an fixed them, but with no real noticeable fix to the programs or the OS itself. If you could tell me how to run the Windows File protection that you talked about, thats the last an only step I haven't tried short of re-formatting or the repair installation.

Close all applications and background processes. If that means turning off Anti-Spyware and Anti-Virus background processes, then disconnect from the internet first. GoTo: Start - Run - (type)sfc /scannow - hit Enter <————— notice the space between the "c" and "/" Have your OS installation CD handy, because SFC will call for it to be inserted to copy/replace any missing or corrupt OS files. Best Regards