Ok heres the deal, my dad bought the new Norton pack, with all Norton stuff in it. He installed it on one computer, everything is fine. So he is about to do it on his computer, starts it up but first you have to download the windows update (he is on Win98SE if that will help any) So he downloaded it and then Im not exactly sure what happened at this point (he isnt handy at present) but I think he may have had to restart his computer. When it booted up again it would load about half of the toolbar up and then it would stop, if you move the mouse it makes a really strange noise and if you click on something nothing happens. He tried restarting a few times but the same thing always happened. So he restarted in safe mode and everything went fine, he did a scan disk and a defrag and then tried restarting in normal mode again, the same thing still happened, although now I think the mouse just plain freezes!

He hadn't actually loaded Norton on when this happened, just got the new patch for windows.

Does anyone know what could be the problem, what he could do etc.?

Thanks in advance

Ross

The noise the computer made when you moved the mouse.. is it a beeping noise or a porcessing/scratching noise?

not beeping, its really hard to describe, kind of grating

Does the noise also occur when you press keys?

havent checked that, well I did try pressing a key, but I cant remember,

Actually I dont think it does, but keys dont respond either

That's the disk. I know that sound, and I hate it. I can only sedgest fromat, because I really don't know how else to fix this.

Win98SE, uhm..... Micro$haft posted the product cycle last year, and 98 support was dropped back in the Fall.

From Where, and What was downloaded???

Norton??? Full deal??? Why????
The home user has only a very small need for Norton. Anti-V and Firewall, the rest is hmm. Let me say, global iconization for using system resources per the instruction of the algorithm to allow no functional input by the user to accommodate a better never complaining system.
Honestly, to the untrained, utilities will create way more issues than they will ever fix.

Back to your problem. Reboot in safe mode, and attempt to un-install whatever it was that was installed, hopefully the file name and date, along with the web site is on a scratch pad next to the machine. This way, when one does have problems, they have a reference right there to help fix it.
Honestly I have not touched a rig with 98 in at the least 4 years. Is there a restore point on there soewhere.

From a hardware standpoint you are out of the woods. You are facing a software issue. The clicking sound emitted when the mouse is moved is due to the driver database failing to be installed.
Without a restore point, or no info on what was installed, the only fix may be a complete OS rebuild. And if in fact you were mislead to a "bad " site, the only fix is a complete fresh start. But, since you are PC savvy, you have all of your most importatnt items on disk right? You know, e-mails, and web sites, last weekends English project, and your history report. Anything of more importance should be on disk. While your at it, there are some newer user friendly OS' available.

Good luck

thanks Felix, Il look into it, oh and by the way just want to say (I know you've probably craked the problem Felix) that when it loads in normal mode it actually loads up basically everything and then just freezes, none of that mouse stuff anymore

felix, when you install Norton, it reads the version of windows and then off of the disk gives you the newest version of that windows (in his case 98SE) available. This was to upgrade the internet explorer etc. which would be needed later on.

It then says that your computer has to be restarted, so that was done, and then when it restarted it froze.

The internet bit was a mix up, he hadnt actually been on the net at that point. Does this help any?

OK I fixed it, I ran in safe mode, restored old settings and deleted some crap off of his system, then loaded up again, and installed internet explorer 6 again, directly from the CD (although I think he did that first time anyway) I restarted and now it is working fine!