my comp is screwed...cant defrag....RECYCLER\NPROTECT\data...files...used nortons removal tool..still there..did safe mode..ect...no option on right click on recycle bin

You can probably use a 98 bootdisk and delete the files that way. But you'd still have that stupid norton nprotect installed. That's what you should remove. How many layers of protection do you need to prevent accidently deleting files? When you move a file to the recycle bin you're asked if that's what you want to do. When you empty the recycle bin you're asked if that's what you want to do. After all that, do you really need nprotect to stop accidental deletions? Especially when it's screwing things up?

thanks for responding...how do i delete nprotect???i tried everything....

I had that problem with a 98 machine. The problem with just deleting it is the OS will recreate it when you reboot. I had to edit the registry to remove the nprotect entries and manually enter the default values by comparing the entries in a non-nprotect machine. Also, when I said above you could use a 98 bootdisk, that wouldn't be the case unless your XP is on a fat32 partition instead of NTFS since 98 can't see NTFS. ( I was thinking I was in the ME forum.) You can check #2 here: http://www.computing.net/answers/wi... That might delete the files and allow you to defrag but the nprotect folder will still be there. I googled "remove nprotect" and got several hits that classified it as spyware. I don't know if they are talking about the norton version or if there's a similarly named spyware version. If there's more than one, I think you must have the norton one since it's in the recycler folder. You can also google remove nprotect folder. If you use regedit to permanently remove it make sure the instructions are for norton's nprotect and not some other adware/spyware version. And be sure to backup your registry before making the changes just in case you make a mistake and want to restore the original one.