Hi, a friend of mine has a problem with windows I would like to see if anyone can troubleshoot. She was downloading an update of Norton antivirus using Mozilla when she got an error and the program quit in the middle of an install. Now none of the applications or programs on the computer will work. The icons on the desktop have changed and no longer look like they did before. We are unable to get any program to open, including "My computer" or anything else in the start menu.

We can reboot the computer but there is no change. Something has altered the OS so it will not open anything at all. I would try to restore but I can't even get the contro panel to open. Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Chris

can  you f8 and boot to safe mode ?

I can get to safe mode, but it is the same there where none of the programs will open.

ugh. That sucks. If it's XP you can try a restore point (don't know how to do I've got W2K).  Best of luck. Sorry I can't help you.

Norton has a serious problem, I had it screw up during install on one 98SE machine.  But only Norton would not install, it did not screw things up.  I have heard of other people having similar install problems.

Never could get Norton to install.  After some time on the phone with them they refunded my money and I put in McAfee, which works fine.

The only thing I can suggest is to try to reinstall Windows.

What verison of Windows.

XP, 2000, 98 ect?

The OS is XP. It doesn't look hopeful.

when you press f8, isnt there an option to select the last configuration of windows that worked?  might want to try that.  even better would be to just get a mac.

Norton is your problem get rid of it as soon as you go back to your system restore point.