New
#1
Certain programs fail to launch
On Monday morning, 9/21/2015 I was able to use FF 37.0.2 & IE 9. After leaving the PC idle most of the day I discovered that FF would not launch. Tried IE and it too would not launch.
Today after not using the PC for several days, I find that MS Word, MS Outlook, and Adobe Reader also no longer launch.
PC shows no signs of any hardware faults. OS is Win 7 Pro SP 1 and is patched through 9/16/15.
A review of system event logs shows each of these various launch failures and the logs all indicate Norton Internet Security\NortonData\21.1.1.7\Definitions .... .(Current Norton NIS version is 21.7.0.11)
A review of the affected programs does not indicate any files being changed in the involved timeframe.
A review of various Norton files shows numerous files being updated throughout the day on the 21st.
Any attempt to launch any of the programs referenced above result in a Windows popup report such as "Firefox has stopped working". Selecting the option to check on-line for a solution results in nothing being found and a reference #0x80000003 which provides nothing useful (NOTE: all affected program produce the same reference #).
There have been no (intentional) changes made to the system, which is about 3 years old. I DO NOT routinely install new software unless I need some (new) functionality that may become available. So far I have resisted trying rollbacks, uninstalling programs, (re-)installing new/additional programs, updates, etc.
Are there any suggestions to resolve this problem?