Done something unwise and got myself in trouble

I’ve been running StartWatch with VVP for more than one year now, no problems at all. Moved to WeatherLink 5.8 in January this year and things just got better.

Here’s the unwise part: I recently changed security suites (from Kaspersky 7.0 to Norton 360 2.0) AND allowed Microsoft Update to install SP3. Too many changes almost at the same time!

After the changes, and only occasionally when powering up, everything goes through the normal sequence (StartWatch, VVP, WeatherLink) and then, when all is running, I get an odd error message, apparently from the Microsoft software. The error message says, in part, "Provides virtualized access to a single Vantage Pro con has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience. If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.

Please tell Microsoft about this problem." And there’s a two button option [Send Error Report] [Don’t Send].

Whichever button I click, sure enough VVP closes and console connectivity is lost.

However, if I then restart VVP manually, all is usually OK. Or if I shut StartWatch down, killing the programs it started, then restart StartWatch, all seems OK. In that case, it appears that there are two copies of StartWatch in memory.

A few more details:

Microsoft XP SP3 Build 2600
StartWatch 1.1.1.144 (Registered)
VVP 1.1.1.2 (Registered)
WeatherLink 5.8.0

Has anyone else seen anything similar? It seems at first glance as though the error is coming in through Win XP SP3 since the error message is a Microsoft error message.

Thoughts appreciated. Jokes about changing things simultaneously when everything had been working just fine tolerated with good humor.

Thanks,

Bob Owen

Anything with Norton’s name on it usually spells problems.
Many of us here have been there and done that.

I have been using Windows Live One Care since September07. I have had NO trouble with it so far. I used to be a loyal Norton fan till it started messing up programs that had run with no problems for a long time. I have noticed that Live One Care uses a lot fewer system resources, and memory than Norton.

So many things can cause that message, making it hard to pinpoint what it is. It could be a failing memory chip, or something Norton’s doing, or a bug in VirtualVP. It could be many things.

Unless you can narrow it down, it’s hard to trouble shoot. I would try first by turning off Norton for a while and see if the problem persists. To the extent you can, try disabling one by one the changes you’ve made since just before the problem started.

Steve
SoftWx

I have uninstalled Norton, reinstalled both the VirtualVP and StartWatch.

Have not removed XP SP3.

Same error, more frequently now (almost every startup).

Thoughts?

I had Norton 360 and had to remove it from my PC, all sorts of things were going wrong, even found it shutting down WD at times, as well as causing problems uploading to my website, to me Norton is just another Trojan, have gone back to the trusted AVG. Security Suite.

Geoff

Looks like the problem is resolved.

Turns out that just using “Add/remove programs” does NOT uninstall Norton 360. Also using the Norton Removal Tool (download from Symantec) does NOT work.

In order to really get rid of the Norton 360 you must boot into “Safe Mode” and only then run the Norton Removal Tool.

Did that, the error message hasn’t recured in the last two days.

Good grief.

And even with all that, you will probably find MANY entries still in your registry courtesy of Norton.

Yes, I’ve removed Norton a couple times; once from one of my computers, and another time for a relative. It is amazing how deeply and broadly it sinks its tentacles. This sort of complexity does not seem like a very good idea from a reliability standpoint. Norton tacitly admits this by their inability to create an uninstall script that truly and cleanly uninstalls their product. I could forgive some odd bits of information left here and there, but with norton, there are active components that remain and continue executing. Glad you got it sorted out.

Steve
SoftWx

I remember searching through the registry for the keys - the coded description types and while it was stll there, I wrote one or two down, and then did the un-install, then did the search and deleted any resulting keys that still had those codes. Some had a header of Norton, some of Symantec etc. so were obvious and confimed my method. It took a while but i dismembered it bit by bit! Then I ran a registry repair program and it tidied up some more.

TokKiwi