Windows only works safe, Norton to blame?

[Trair]

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.

 

[richc46]

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

I think that if you follow the instructions of the clean boot, you will find out the cause.

 

[Trair]

Thank you for a quick response.

I tried a clean boot, however it would not start up even with everything except microsoft services disabled.

For that matter, there were only 4 other services to disable! Two were NVIDEA, one was Norton, and one was Steam. Would have liked to see if Norton was the cause, but I didn't quite get that far...

Edit: I should also note that I tried to reboot with the Windows 7 disc in a drive. Completely ignored and went right to blue ring of death.

 

[richc46]

Uninstall your antivirus
Replace with Microsoft Security Essentials.
Download and run the Norton Removal Tool to uninstall your Norton product | Norton Support

Then try clean boot again. If you can run in safe mode but not clean boot, probably a driver problem.

 

[zigzag3143]

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.

 

[Trair]

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...

 

[richc46]

My post and Kens both mention drivers. Lets see how that works.

How to Find Drivers
search Google for the name of the driver
- compare the Google results with what's installed on your system to figure out which device/program it belongs to
- visit the web site of the manufacturer of the hardware/program to get the latest drivers (DON'T use Windows Update or the Update driver function of Device Manager).
- if there are difficulties in locating them, post back with questions and someone - will help you search Google for the name of the driver
- compare the Google results with what's installed on your system to figure out which device/program it belongs to
- - if there are difficulties in locating them, post back with questions and someone will try and help you locate the appropriate program.
- The most common drivers are listed on this page: http://www.carrona.org/dvrref.html
- - Driver manufacturer links are on this page: http://www.carrona.org/drvrdown.html
To remove any left over driver remnants, especially from graphics cards, use driver sweeper
www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/

Get it from the website.

 

[Trair]

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 uninstalled Norton and clean booted with nothing except microsoft services, and it finally got past the blue ring of death. That only happened after a scary boot where the monitor didn't work until I reset my computer again.

I understand that a cleanboot will help me pinpoint what exactly is causing the problem, so off I go to activate the NVIDEA services to see if it is in fact my graphics card drivers or whatever. If that's the case I'll look at drivers, if not I guess we'll chalk it up to Norton?

Back soon, sister's back home so I no longer have a second computer to forum while my fubar'd computer resets.

EDIT: Gee, when all works right it doesn't take long at all. I just restarted with the two NVIDEA options enabled and all went well. I think we can rule out the graphics driver mucking it up. I very much doubt that the gaming program Steam is the root of my problems, so I conclude that it was Norton.

My sister runs Windows 7 fine with Norton, so in your experience is there a reason why Norton might screw up my system like this?

 

[Trair]

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.

 

[Mycatisbigfoot]

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

 

[Barman58]

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

Then don't use cracks :sarc:

and take a moment to read rule 9

 

[Trair]

The nightmare continues.

The startup failures and random crashes (oh yeah, my system infrequently/randomly freezes even in safe mode) continue even after removing Norton. So I set my sights on the graphics drivers.

I uninstalled my NVIDIA drivers and then attempted to reinstall them. I can't seem to get windows to turn off Aero and recognize my very high powered graphics card. It doesn't seem to matter though, because the blue circle of death continues even with Aero.

I then decided to use the oldest system restore point. That didn't work.

So I copied all my important files on my sister's external, and reinstalled Windows 7. All my old stuff is in one of those windows.old folders, but SURELY resetting all of Windows would have fixed my problems, right?

No. I am still getting the blue ring of death even with everything but windows services turned off. No NVIDIA, no games, nothing but base Windows 7. At most I can only boot into safe mode with network.

So cleanbooting doesnt show anything, reinstalling Windows 7 only made things worse, and I can't even get NVIDIA working. Help?!