Topic: Exasperated!

[Jon]

Hello readers.  I'm new to PC Pals - hope I'm posting this in the right place.  Can anybody advise me on the following?  After uninstalling free trial anti-virus software from my PC, I attempted to restart, but without success.  Numerous attempts have brought the same result: a blue screen with the message that an error has occurred.  It instructs me to press 'return' to 'return to Windows'.  If I do this, nothing happens.  It instructs me to 'press any key to continue'.  If I do this, I get a plain black screen and nothing else.  During one attempt to restart, a window opened with this message: 'sntsvc has caused an error in KRNL386.EXE'.  Then the whole PC simply froze.  Blue Yonder (who provide my broadband connection) have advised me to ring Microsoft's helpline.  But if anybody out there can offer any advice (in layman's terms only, please - I'm no expert!) I would be immensely grateful.  It may be a couple of days before I can check back in again as, obviously, I'm having to use a friend's computer to do so at the moment.  Hope to hear from you soon!  Best wishes, Jon.

[Jon]

Sorry, I should have mentioned, my computer is (or was) running Windows Millennium Edition.  Cheers.

[Clive]

Hi Jon and  

I'm not a techie, but what I would suggest for starters is to try booting up in safe mode by pressing F8 as you boot, and then attempting a system restore to a time before you loaded the free AVG onto your machine.  Let us know how you get on with that.

[joudi]

Hi Jon and welcome to PC-PALS,

Ya, as Clive told you, it must work.

But, I told a friend of mine (two weeks ago), not to restore from "Safe Mode", but to remove completely the program "Anti-Virus". And, fortunately it worked with him.    

[Jon]

Thanks for the prompt replies and advice; help appreciated.  I'm away from home for a few days so I shan't be able to try that for a short while.  The only problem I foresee is that I'm pretty sure that the PC's previous owner had disabled System Restore as an anti-virus measure.  Any idea how else you would go about getting out of Safe Mode?

[joudi]

Any idea how else you would go about getting out of Safe Mode?

Did I misunderstand the question, or my english is not enough good?

To get out of "Safe Mode", you just have to restart your PC when you finish your affaires with "Safe Mode". It'll reboot automatically in "normal Mode".    

Or, maybe you've ment something else?

Sorry !!!    

[Jon]

I've never had cause to use Safe Mode, so I assumed it had to be activated/deactivated.  So I can just restart to return to Normal?  (Thanks for the advice)

[Simon]

Just another suggestion, but if something is not right following uninstalling a program, it's possible that the said program didn't uninstall properly, and may have either left some traces behind, which could be screwing things up, by trying to run, but finding their counterparts missing.  It may also have removed files it was not supposed to remove, during the uninstall process.  My suggestion is, reinstall the program you have just uninstalled, and see if the problem is cured, then try the uninstall again.  Look in the Start Menu programs list, to see if the program has it's own uninstaller, which may work better than Add / Remove.  If it doesn't have an uninstaller, try booting into Safe Mode (press F8 repeatedly during boot up), then remove the program using Add / Remove, reboot into normal Windows, and see what happens.

Hope that helps - come back to us if you're not sure.  If all else fails, it might be worth looking on the website of the troublesome program, to see if there are any special procedures for uninstalling it.

[Clive]

The way I read it is that Jon can no longer get into Windows which is why I suggested Safe Mode and System Restore.  To get into Safe Mode you have to keep tapping the F8 key while the computer is booting up.  You won't be able to access the Internet in Safe Mode but I think you can re-install the AVG from CD and see if Simon's idea works for you.

[Jon]

Thanks for the advice, gents.  It's going to be Monday before I have a chance to try any of this, so please check back.  Cheers.

[Jon]

Success!  I followed Clive's initial advice.  The software had not been successfully uninstalled.  Now it's fully removed, my PC is functioning again.  Many thanks to you all for your advice; it's much appreciated.  Best wishes, Jon.