Newbie Suggestions Please

[Lisandro]

all right...since it took so long to get it working, I'll just stay with it for awhile.

thanks again!
CoJo

After your system is really working (I mean, you can send/receive e-mails, do a full scan of your system, etc.) I could guide you to remove Norton completely... If you want... Don't forget, once you intalled Norton in a XP system, it will bring you trouble when installing a second antivirus.

You can run eicar.com virus test (it´s not a virus, just a test). See links here in the post about eicar test...  

[CoJo]

Dear Mr. Technical!
I really appreciate your offer of help...
but, I "jumped for joy" too soon   I logged off to go get dinner and when I logged back on, I had to manually
search for ashDisp.exe for the icons to come back...
I did a through scan, including archived files, and found one virus and a whole lot of things that could not be scanned...no error number, just that an error stopped it from being scanned.
sigh...I hate XP, but I hate Norton even more  
this Dell from hell (pardon that bad word) has not run the same ever since I installed/unistalled Norton Antivirus and Norton Personal Firewall.
Can you offer any suggestions for me?
Thank you, CoJo  

[Lisandro]

Dear Mr. Technical!
I really appreciate your offer of help...
Can you offer any suggestions for me?
Thank you, CoJo  

I had a similar problem. avast Home Edition and pieces of the Norton SystemWorks 2003 (except NAV) were incompatible! The solution was manually editing two Registry keys (apparently corrupted by Norton Anti-Virus Removal Utility).

Here we are! First of all, take it easy, relax, it's a long journey...  
Do you have a XP system, ok?
Try to run avast! and clean your system before you go ahead...

1. Desinstall all Symantec Products (LiveRegistration and LiveUpdate included).
2. Boot.
3. Delete any folder related to their products: C:\Program files\Symantec, C:\Program files\Common files\Symantec Shared, C:\Program files\Norton SystemWorks
4. You will need a Registry Cleaner to remove the 'trash' left by Symantec.
There is a good one here. It´s no more a freeware but you can use it to clean your system untill it expires.
5. Run Norton Anti-Virus Removal Utility.
6. Boot
7. Install avast! again
8. You are almost there! Clean your system (through scan).

Tomorrow I'll teach you how to delete some 'invisible' trash left behind by Norton...  

[CoJo]

all right, sir
I took a deep breath and will do these now and check in with you tomorrow...
thanks ever so much!
CoJo