StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Ok a system admin from across the street is having issues with his server. He got a message about unmountable volume and to uninstalled AV. He uninstalled symntec and the system blue screened. Now he can not even get into safe mode. And of course they didn't have a recovery plan in place.

He ran recovery console and chkdsk/r and it gets about 75 percent done and crashes.
The only thing else I could think of is to use ERD or similar and try to get needed files and reinstall. But was hopeing some of the computer experts here knew a few tricks to try.

that's what you get for installing Norton or Symantec.

UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME usually indicates some sector is corrupt on the hard drive in question, likely the boot sector. I don't think it's entirely Symantec's fault in this case.

Instead of Recovery Console, you could tell him to run Hitachi's Drive Fitness Test; even if it isn't a Hitachi drive, it'll still let you know if there's a physical error. Otherwise, you could try out SpinRite, or pull out the drive manually and connect it via USB to recover the files.

MKSheppard wrote:that's what you get for installing Norton or Symantec.

Symantec's corporate offerings are significantly better than their home products. Also, NAV 2009 is actually a solid AV program.

MKSheppard wrote:that's what you get for installing Norton or Symantec.

Norton is the shit. I mean, its super paranoid about I a lot of things (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but all you have to do is go under the firewall menu and have it allow the menu to run. It works perfectly for me, and I have the 2005 version. So I'm sure it has only gotten better from here.

Until very recently (as phongn says) Norton's home products had been famously worthless, terrible and bloated for nearly a decade. Anyone who used, let alone recommended it, was ignorant or getting paid off. It's improved, but it's not going to get people like me away from alternatives and idiots are going to just keep using Norton when it comes pre-installed. It'll take a lot for them to get their reputation back after selling crap off the back of it for ages.

Stark wrote:Until very recently (as phongn says) Norton's home products had been famously worthless, terrible and bloated for nearly a decade. Anyone who used, let alone recommended it, was ignorant or getting paid off. It's improved, but it's not going to get people like me away from alternatives and idiots are going to just keep using Norton when it comes pre-installed. It'll take a lot for them to get their reputation back after selling crap off the back of it for ages.

I'd have to agree; working with the consumer version of Norton (360/Internet Security/insert other huge product here) at my university's helpdesk proves time and again to be an utter annoyance. Still, I'd recommend it over most free alternatives like AVG (which once thought VisualStudio 2003 was a virus...yes, we had that happen to a customer), and I-love-calling-everything-a-trojan Avast antivirus, if only as a "might as well since it's cheaper" move. If you're, well, cheap.

Doesn't really excuse the company's carelessness, but hey, one pays for what they get. Kaspersky and NOD32 4 lyfe!