DecoyDuck

I don't believe DHCP to be the problem, as I don't have a nic in my PC. About the only thing I have which resembles a "Network Interface", is my Alcatel ADSL Speed touch USB modem, but my ISP (BTOpenWorld) uses Radius servers rather than DHCP, so there isn't much I can do about that. Having said that, I have definitely noticed that Windows XP boots drastically faster when the NAV 2002 auto-protect service is disabled, so for the moment I'm going to keep my accusations aimed towards NAV. If only I could work out what is stopping NAV CE from up[censored] it’s virus definitions

Quote: Just got NAV 7.6 CE works perfectly as it should does not cause the system to pause at all. that is what i like to see And on the other hand I don't appear to be able to get NAV CE 7.6 working correctly. It installs fine, and functions as you would expect, except for one thing; the SARC updates don't seem to work. I say don't work, because even though they never display any errors, from what I can see, and always seemingly complete, the definitions never seem to get updated. You can see this by looking at the main NAV CE window, which still, and constantly shows the virus definitions as being dated February 2000 (or is it 2001?), which are the ones that are applied during installation. It doesn't matter it I wait several hours or even reboot dozens of times, the date still shows as being back in February sometime. Because of this, I'm currently using NAV 2002, but like others I am suffering from horrendous slow downs when XP is finishing booting. It doesn't appear to effect the time XP takes to get to the desktop, just a good 40 seconds to a minute after that, where my HD goes mad, and I can't use the GUI at all. Unless Symantec can fix this, I'd rather go back to NAV CE, if only I could work out why it won't update.

This is a damn strange one. I've just jumped ship from 2k to XP Pro and generally I've had no problems. Except for this one. I have, what would appear to be, a lovely phantom file (vspubapi.dll. A part of ZoneAlarm), that I cannot delete, move or rename. Attempts to delete the file in Windows Explorer, show the file disappearing from the Explorer window, only to reappear when I refresh, or open a new window. Attempts to delete the file in a Command Prompt (using either erase or del), do as predicted, and return no error messages. Assumingly deleting the file. That is until I type dir again, which shows the file as still there. I can open the file in notepad, enter some random gibberish into the file, and successfully save it. This shows the size of the filename increasing, but again, if I try to delete it the file reappears, back at 0 bytes. I can also successfully copy another file, with the same name, over it. But then when I try to delete the file I've just assumingly over-written, it vanishes and reappears, back at 0 bytes again. And, the one which concerns me the most, attempts to move or rename the file throw an error saying that the directory or file is corrupt and that I should run chkdsk. Except I've run chkdsk several times, both with /R flag, as a start-up scan, and also from the recovery console and neither of them find any problems with the disk or the files on it. I've searched groups.google.com and tried loads of things suggested by other people appearing to have the same problem (across a variety of OS' as far back as NT 3.5), but none of them work If you guys have any ideas as to how I can get rid of this bastard file, I'd be extremely greatful. If not, I'll go back to 2k (again)

I went through the registry and removed all references to the file, but it still wouldn't play fair, and after wandering aimlessly around the net for a few hours looking for solutions, I gave up, and formatted the partition as FAT32 this time. So if it comes to it, and I have the same problem again, I can always try the old DOS bootdisk approach. Thanks for the help anyway, Guys. Much appreciated.

Yep, both options are unticked.

I really should have thought of that one Still nothing though. There's only 1 vspubapi.dll on my PC. I'm beginning to suspect the MFT, but I wouldn't even know how to go about fixing it, assuming it is the problem.