[pchelpers] Date problem with Nortons 2002
- From: chrisc@xxxxxxxxx
- To: pchelpers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 11:28:48 +1300
Hi
This is a long discussion but the last straw problem above has made
me decide to do something more active about the whole issue.
I will tell you about the current problem and then I will digress slightly to
bring in a larger issue which the problem above has illustrated.
Problem.
I recently installed Nortons 2002 on my machine at home. (A recent
reload of W2K onto a new motherboard). Some time after this I was
checking for file versions based on creation or modification dates
(trying to find which version of my Netscape Bookmarks was current)
and I found that my motherboard was set to a date early last year. I
reset it to this year.
A short time later I got a messaage from Nortons Antivirus saying that
my subscription had failed. I was surprised to say the least. However
upon reflection I realised that Norton had set the subscription date
based on last years date and that now made the new date right at the
END of the sub period.
So I did the obvious and completely (?) removed Norton from the PC
followed by a new install. But it still didn't work. So I think that Nortons
wrote something into the registry which didn't get removed and which is
now being accessed by the new install. At the moment the only way for
me to use the Antivirus program is for me to reset the date back a year
and as you can imagine this is completely unsatisfactory. Now I could
go out a buy a 100 copies and every single one would be screwed by
this date issue. I know why it has been done this way and that is to stop
you from using a product longer than a year witrhout resubscribing.
(I have just found out that there is a small fix which is a Live Update
Reviver which might fix the above problem but this doesn't help with
other problems of a like nature).
So what I need is a program which can monitor every single access to
the registry and give me a list of each entry BEFORE and AFTER it is
altered and whereabouts within the registry these entries are. Then
after a program has been removed you can redo this list and check to
see what entries weren't removed or altered back. It will then be
obvious where the date problem is being caused. I feel this will solve a
lot of problems with other software issues particularly where reinstalls
don't fix a problem especially where you had a working program,
something goes wrong, but a reload won't fix it.
Digression. Also long.
A long time ago my wife was running Pagemaker (version 1 or
something) on an AT (Windows 2 or something) and it was as slow as
a wet week. I found a program which allowed me to monitor every
single access to a file or application over a period of time. So I could
load Pagemaker, perform an operation and then exit PM. I would then
have a list of how many times various files were accessed. I took the
top ten and loaded them into Ramdrive on startup and Pagemaker
performed up to 20 times faster. I am looking at doing this for modern
operating systems because the principle should still hold true. So what
I want is a program similar to this which will do the same function on
Registry reads/writes.
Digression continues.
Now over the last 3 months I have had problems with Nero CD Writer,
ActiveSmart (IDE disk drive program), the above problem with Nortons,
with ScreenSeize (a screen grabber) plus one other the name which
escapes me.
This problem has mostly been where the program won't run fullscreen
but will minimise. A characteristic has been that most of these did work
once but somewhere along the way stopped working correctly. A
removal using either their own deinstall or Microsofts removal program
followed by a reinstall doesn't work with the aberrant behaviour still
present. Requests to the program manfs results results in no fixes. The
only fix found to actually do anything usefull is a full OS reinstall and I
have had enough of doing this. So my conclusion is that either there is
an unknown/unreported bug or a setting with an extra feature with W2K
and W98 which stops the applications from performing correctly.
My first guess is that the registry isn't being cleaned out correctly hence
my question about a registry monitoring program.
Looking back over the last year I would have to say that 80% of all
Windows problems have been over the above issue of what I would
have to call registry corruption (or maybe Microsofts deliberately
crippled deinstaller is at fault ?).
So my questions to the group are :
1. Does anybody know of a registry entry monitor ?
2. Does anybody know how or of ramdrives for use with Windows ?
3. Does anybody know of a program which monitors which programs
get used and how often they are accessed ?
4. Has anybody had problems like these before ?
Thanks.
Regards
Chris Calvert, Engineering Manager
Business Computers Ltd, 506 Wairakei Road,
Christchurch, New Zealand.
Ph +64 3 359 5556 Fax +64 3 359 5975
Check our Web site at www.bcl.co.nz
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