I ran into a similar problem a few months ago, my teenage son had downloaded something (he won't tell me what) that disabled both my Norton AntiVirus and Personal Firewall (both 2003).

I managed to get onto the Symantec website, which advised me to uninstall and then reinstall both items of software. After running my (newly) re-installed and updated antivirus software I then ran Ad-Aware SE and Spybot to triple check that there was nothing else lurking on my system.

Finally, just to emphasise the point, there are things out there that will target your protection software (antivirus, firewall, anti-spyware, etc.) with the deliberate intention of disabling them. However, these “things” have to be downloaded, either intentionally or hidden within something else, or place on your system by a hacker .




UK Bob