Windows only works safe, Norton to blame?

I'm getting stumped by my situation and hope someone can help.

I got a new computer just a week ago and had no problems until a few days ago. Believe me, I stressed tested my gaming rig with some vacation time, and all seemed well until Windows went on the fritz.

FYI I'm using Windows 64 bit home premium, NVIDIA GEForce GTX 480 with directx 11, and a EVGA x58 motherboard.

The main problem: Windows will not finish loading normally. It gets past the cool colored icons coming together, and then it goes to the loading windows blue screen with the spinning ring. The ring stops spinning, it sounds like the computer is still loading, but nothing happens. It just stops.

I am able to run the system in safe modes. Including the network access mode. I ran Norton Virus Scan, and it comes up with nothing. Still has the same loading problem after doing that.

I tried restoring my system to the last "functional" point a few days ago, and that worked for a while. But now less than two days later it's doing the same thing.

Tonight I'm looking at alternative solutions since a system restore only worked for about 24 hours. I'm looking at the system restore information, and there were two changes last night that happened without my knowledge. The last major change was a DirectX download (which i know nothing about). And Norton antivirus changed versions, possibly due to a liveupdate while idle. I don't understand how either of these could affect my system, especially since my computer was working fine before it crashed just 90 minutes ago.

So what on earth is causing Windows 7 not to load properly in "not-safe" mode? I'm not getting black screens so DirectX/graphics card seems unlikely, I would hope Norton updates dont screw with things like this, and Windows 7 has run well until recently. I don't have much that loads on startup either.

Trair said:

I'm getting stumped by my situation and hope someone can help.

I got a new computer just a week ago and had no problems until a few days ago. Believe me, I stressed tested my gaming rig with some vacation time, and all seemed well until Windows went on the fritz.

FYI I'm using Windows 64 bit home premium, NVIDIA GEForce GTX 480 with directx 11, and a EVGA x58 motherboard.

The main problem: Windows will not finish loading normally. It gets past the cool colored icons coming together, and then it goes to the loading windows blue screen with the spinning ring. The ring stops spinning, it sounds like the computer is still loading, but nothing happens. It just stops.

I am able to run the system in safe modes. Including the network access mode. I ran Norton Virus Scan, and it comes up with nothing. Still has the same loading problem after doing that.

I tried restoring my system to the last "functional" point a few days ago, and that worked for a while. But now less than two days later it's doing the same thing.

Tonight I'm looking at alternative solutions since a system restore only worked for about 24 hours. I'm looking at the system restore information, and there were two changes last night that happened without my knowledge. The last major change was a DirectX download (which i know nothing about). And Norton antivirus changed versions, possibly due to a liveupdate while idle. I don't understand how either of these could affect my system, especially since my computer was working fine before it crashed just 90 minutes ago.

So what on earth is causing Windows 7 not to load properly in "not-safe" mode? I'm not getting black screens so DirectX/graphics card seems unlikely, I would hope Norton updates dont screw with things like this, and Windows 7 has run well until recently. I don't have much that loads on startup either.

Video driver probably--Re-install it
When upgrading your graphic driver you MUST remove all traces of the current driver. In order to do that we recommend using Guru3D - Driver Sweeper

When it is removed then download and install the fresh copy.

The thing is I didn't manually update my graphics driver. It supposedly did a stealth update I wasn't aware of, and that's the last big change that system restore recognizes.

Oddly my computer started working the last time I system restored to a point when I didn't have Norton. I reinstalled it and presto, the next day I have the same problem.

I'll try removing Norton and clean booting without system restoring, see if that works. Is it a known issue that Norton and Windows 7 are incompatible? What the heck is going wrong here?

Be back soon...

I'm mostly writing this if someone else has a problem in the future.

So last Tuesday I uninstalled Norton and that got my system running again. Attempted to get support from Norton to see if this is a known issue, talked to some people in India via chat at 10PM Central time and had em watch as my system flawlessly started up after reinstalling Norton and even run a LiveUpdate. Kind of like getting a kleenex and then not needing to sneeze anymore...

System runs flawlessly until tonight. I was gaming with some friends here LAN party style, I close games and turn off monitor to watch a movie, I come back and it appears that my system A) restarted without my telling it to, and B) I have the Blue Ring of Death again.

I deleted Norton almost straight away... I couldn't disable it via Cleanbooting... and here it is running flawlessly again.

As recommended, I am checking out Microsoft Security Essentials. I don't see any documentation online or any indication that anyone else has had this issue, so I'm rather baffled. If I can go a week without this happening again though, wouldn't that be nice?

And now to join my friends in another Starcraft 2 match. Cheers.

I'd use advast free anti virus, I know it gets lots of false postivtes with cracks, but still its worth the truble it gives, it gets viruses on the spot