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Am I Being Paranoid?

Question
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Hello all!
After much frustration with a few other products, I'm coming back to OneCare for my 64 bit rig. Here's my concern:
I did a rebuild of my PC last night, and installed OneCare - Everything's working great. While I'm working with Virtual PC (just setting up a "test bed" Vista environment), my machine hangs completely. I finally turn off the power, start back up, and Firefox's settings are completely reset (including my add ons for NoScript and Adblock).
While I *think* the hang was due to having hardware assisted virtualization on (more info than needed probably, but oh well), I'm a little concerned about what happened to Firefox. I uninstalled and reinstalled the app as well as ran a full scan with OneCare (no issues found), but I wonder if I should just do another rebuild on the box from the PC image I have to be safe.
Or... Am I just being paranoid (wasn't visiting any web sites at all actually at the time, and No UAC pop-ups asking for admin privs)? Is there anything else I could do via OneCare to make sure my machine is OK (that would be worthwhile doing)?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 12:23 PM
Answers
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I think perhaps it might be paranoia. :-)
I am quite sure that OneCare won't touch Firefox settings. I suspect that the hard lock-up and power down caused your Firefox issue. Powering off a hung PC can cause all kinds of strange things up to an including a corrupt boot sector.
-steve
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 4:04 PMModerator
All replies
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I think perhaps it might be paranoia. :-)
I am quite sure that OneCare won't touch Firefox settings. I suspect that the hard lock-up and power down caused your Firefox issue. Powering off a hung PC can cause all kinds of strange things up to an including a corrupt boot sector.
-steve
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 4:04 PMModerator -
I figured it was paranoia, haha. In any event, for the sake of two hours I just reimaged the box and all is well. OneCare is running great. Thanks!
Thursday, August 14, 2008 3:59 PM -
You're welcome. :-) Well, re-imaging the box will certainly remove any possibility of a problem...
-steve
Thursday, August 14, 2008 5:15 PMModerator -
On a similar note, my PC, running XP home SP3 crashed completely. Prior to the crash, I had not been running OneCare. In the process of rebuilding and not really wanting to re-install Norton, I came across OneCare. Gave it a shot. It loaded fine and was running. After re-loading my system, I had bunches of OS updates to load (still looking for any good solid software package to build an image). During the updating, I noticed the PC would periodically freeze. I had to do a power off/hardware shutdown. After about 5 or 6 of these, I figured maybe I needed to at least get to SP2 to correct the problem. Well, I'm now up to SP3 and I still have the problem. Thought maybe OneCare had a problem with ZoneAlarm so I shut that down. Nope, still freezes from time to time. This morning, I asked OneCare to check for updates, it found none. I bit the bullet and uninstalled OneCare this morning. Haven't locked up yet. I repeat 'yet' because sometimes it takes awhile for the beast to show itself. I'm hoping it's not OneCare in that it seems like a nice product but yet, if it is not, I'm stuck with a tough problem. Has anyone else had a problem of a PC locking up? This is a single home PC hooked to nothing but the internet.Wednesday, August 27, 2008 2:59 PM
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You cannot run multiple security programs in that way. Having just remaining traces of Multiple firewalls or Multiple AntiVirus applications installed can be a recipe for disaster. Simply shutting one down, or perhaps even just a Control Panel>Add/Remove to uninstall, may be insufficient to prevent contention. since they are installed at very low system levels.
ZoneAlarm uninstall:http://forums.zonealarm.com/zonelabs/board/message?board.id=AllowAccess&message.id=103
Norton uninstall:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
OneCare uninstall/cleanup:
http://forums.microsoft.com/WindowsOneCare/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=828910&SiteID=2Wednesday, August 27, 2008 5:06 PM -
OK. The deed is done. Zone Alarm is out and OneCare is in. I'll keep my fingers crossed I don't freeze up again. Thanks to everyone for the help.Wednesday, August 27, 2008 9:20 PM
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Just to close the loop on this, my freezing issue was not due to OneCare, but a conflict between Virtual PC and my motherboard - I was using Hardware-assisted virtualization, which my hardware didn't like apparently
Once that was fixed, no slowdowns at all.
Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:42 PM -
So far so good. I've been running with OneCare now for almost 24 hours and no freeze ups. I never was able to run that long before. Thanks again for all the help and suggestions.Thursday, August 28, 2008 2:48 PM
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Excellent. Please let the forum know if any further problems develop, although I think the key to your success was starting with a very clean platform to begin with. This is why the caution is also given to initially install OneCare and other security applications on a virus and malware free platform, which is a good reason to use the OneCare Safety Scanner:
http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm
Thursday, August 28, 2008 3:40 PM