Hello, On two machines (a laptop and a desktop) I’ve run Windows XP (home and pro) with Norton Internet Security (NIS) since 2004 and did not have problems like I do today. In fact, both machines were wonderfully stable for how I used them and I do use my computers a lot for work (documents and CAD programs). In October of 2008 I reformatted both machines due to a virus on the laptop. I reformatted the desktop just to be sure I got rid of everything (the computers share the same home network). Immediately after reformatting both machines and going through the long process of installing updates my laptop locked so bad that I had to cut power to regain control of my laptop. The desktop has exhibited similar problems. Both machines continue to behave in this way and now I am very careful with each machine and reboot often to help keep stability whereas before I never thought about stability. Another huge problem I have had with both machines is running Internet Explorer 7 (IE). When I run IE it will not take very long before my CPU is running at 100% just to doing something simple such as checking email. This slows the entire machine down on both machines. Very often IE locks, and I have to use the Task Manager to close out the application (and even using the Task Manager IE will not close for several minutes). This happens on a daily basis and it takes something as simple as visiting my Yahoo email to provoke this. The desktop seems more prone to locking up (to the point of needing to cut power) when I use the external drive. I could go on and on with long and detailed descriptions of these symptoms that I’ve been experiencing for the last four months. I’m not sure what to do, but I would like to find some way to “measure” things on both of these machines to help me find the problem(s). Personally, I have a gut feeling that either SP3 is the problem (on both machines I couldn’t install SP3 due to some error, but after reformatting I was able to install SP3) or the problem is with NIS2008. Prior to reformatting both machines I was running NIS2005 and NIS2006. I upgraded to NIS2008 when reinstalling everything. David

Just to say that SP3 has free MS Support as indicated here --- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pr... What is Service Pack 3 ?

http://windowssecrets.com/2008/05/2... identifies the problem as a conflict between the two. It looks like the fix, http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/5... is out there on symantec's website. Direct link to fix Silence is golden but duct tape is silver

On both computers I installed SP3 before installing Norton.

I had to cut power to my machine twice today. All I did was use IE. Sometimes I think SP3 is nothing more than a conspiracy to move people away from XP. No one can fathom why IE runs so poorly and no one can suggest tests to troubleshoot what might be the problem. I don't see why IE should cause a computer to crash. It is just so stupid and frustrating.

Does it look like Norton is the culprit?? First of all, to determine that IE has anything to do with it, install Firefox and run that a for a bit. When I have had problems with locking up when online browsing, it's been a video card that's gone bad, or needs updated drivers. I worked on a home network recently that had a NAS drive that was incompatible with Vista, but worked great on the XP machines on the network. Anything like that on your network? Run Windows Memory Test or memtest. It makes sense to think of what's common with the two machines since you're having similar problems. I would definitely uninstall Norton on one of the machines and then clean it up with CCleaner and see if that makes a difference. I'm curious to see if this can be fixed.

For that matter, you could uninstall SP3 and see what results you get. Silence is golden but duct tape is silver