Installing MSE disables taskbar

Hi Jacee - thought we almost had it but it didn't work. What I did:

- ran norton removal tool
- disabled MSE service
- uninstalled MSE
- ran norton removal tool again (i noticed that after MSE was uinstalled, all icons on taskbar had changed from their graphic representation to white page of paper so didn't think this would hurt)
- rebooted - everything came up fine, taskbar icons fully operational
- installed MSE - as it was installing I kept running my mouse over the taskbar icons and they seemed to be working right up until the virus update step completed and then they froze. I don't know if this is related to the virus update process or that it took until this time for the MSE service to be fully up.

I had a problem with Mcafee then MSE: uninstalling Mcafee did not remove all of its references in the registry and this somehow clashed with MSE. I can only suggest again: run the uninstaller, run the uninstall tool, go to the registry (Start > Search Box > regedit), then Ctrl-F, type Norton in the search box, and delete every key that has norton in it (highlight the key then hit Delete). Every time you delete a key, hit F3 to find the next key with Norton in it, and keep going until the registry is clean. A pound to a penny that even after what appears to be a total uninstall, there will be plenty of Norton references in your registry and they may well be interfering with MSE. Once it is all clean, try reinstalling MSE.

Clunkfish - thank you for providing the instructions on what to do with regedit. I hadn't done this in a number of years and wasn't sure if it was still the same in Windows 7. I did as you suggested and searched and deleted for all Norton/Symantec, Zone Alarm/ZoneAlarm, Ad-Aware/Lavasoft references. There were some for Norton and Zone Alarm but there were a lot for Ad-Aware so it took quite a while. I removed all references that I could.

Jacee - I then ran ccclean and disk defrag (analysis said it didn't need it but defragged anyway). Uninstalled MSE and ran the ccclean again. Then rebooted. Also double-checked to make sure the Zone Alarm reference you found did not appear in the registry.

After reboot, re-installed MSE. Had full use of task bar right up until the virus update finished. I kept testing as the green bar was moving during the update process. As soon as the update completed, I lost functionality of the task bar.

By the way, thanks to you both for your help on this.

Wow, this is a really good one :)

I am getting out of my depth, but a couple of thoughts: there may be something installed on the Lenovo that is causing the prob (that would be a tough one to resolve); or possibly that MSE needs to update itself before it uploads the latest virus definitions. Howsabout installing MSE, then running Windows Update before allowing MSE to update its definitions? Bit of a last throw of the dice from me I'm afraid

No resolution yet but will probably have to wait until after Christmas to tackle further. Thanks again to all who helped on this and Happy Holidays.

Okay - still fiddling with this. Have done everything short of clean install: restored system back to before my first attempt at installing mse, removed all prior antivirus using all tools available, cleaned the registry, clean and defrag the disks, ran all system diagnostics... still get the same results

So, I tried to run in Safe Mode to see what happens and, lo and behold, I cannot start it in Safe Mode. I assume that I should be able to or am I wrong? I see that MsMpEng.exe and msseces.exe are running in the task list but the MSE interface still shows real-time protection as off.

Does this spark any "aha" thoughts from anyone?

I believe so - the name of the download file is mssefullinstall-amd64fre-en-us-vista-win7. Does that seem correct to you?