I have HP XP home edition that I purchased in December and had a technician come to set it up and install Norton Antivrus and DSL. Was using Media player yesterday when I got prompt to update it, which I did. They said to turn on system restore... the computer technician had it turned off.
I turned it on... now am I supposed to leave it on or turn it back off? My Norton antivirus scans every Friday at 8 p.m. Do I turn on system restore after scan?

System restore is a feature in xp that in case of a screw up you didn't want to happen you can go to system restore and it will restore the computer to whatever settings you had at the certain date you pick. Probably microsoft's software just telling you you didn't have it on, system restore requires a certain space of the hard drive to itself and that usually means it has to be sectioned off for just that part. It's a good feature to have when something goes wrong but you really don't need it, plus you probably most likely don't have partitioned part on the drive to have system retore so its better good off. And no you don't need it on or off for norton to work.

Thank you. I will leave it off... hope I don't have to use it.

Probably won't, no prob

Thanks again... scan worked fine.. have it off. Also visited your site, interesting, will keep it handy.

Good the scan worked well, oh its just a hangout site for people to ask q's or give a's. Starting right now though. :)

You were very helpful... wish you much success with your site.

In case your system ever screws up, you may need System Restore turned on, I thought I would never need mine, then just this week, I was glad I had it turned on, so I could return to another time when it ran fine.

Also Norton Anti Virus in most recent testing and reviews, has generally finished only in the top 5, with at least 2 maybe 3 programs ahead of it.

2 that finished ahead of Norton and stopped everything that the testers used on it, were AVG Anti Virus, free, and Anti Vir, I use Anti Vir as my no.1 and AVG as the 2nd and backup defense, I got rid of Norton and Mcafee and Panda just this year, when they slipped down the list and all 3 are system resource hogs, the 2 free ones are not.

I suggest to, uninstall Norton and get the 2 better free ones. :cool:

Avg by grisoft or I would also suggest clamwin, clamav www.clamwin.com, oh and forgot, hp, good machine, I own two pavilions and might get me another one when the new os comes out and intel makes a 64bit processor to compete with amd

Thank you Wendy for your take on this... now I am wondering if I should turn it on... they don't make these things very user-friendly, especially for dummies like me... and I did read the Dummies books... no help. I got the Norton (which I had to pay for) and expiry is next December... wish I had know about the others... maybe will try to leave system restore on, but in my help and support section it says virus' could be in set points... which virus scan can't detect... sure wish I had a teenager living next door... they know all about these computers. Thank you... this site is very helpful and I am learning.

Well the cool thing about any virus scanner that in fact they can scan it, just that if you have a partitioned part for it, scan that, or just scan the whole drive. But free av's can be better :D but yeah it is a good thing to have, system restore.

What I would suggest is, to do a couple of free online Virus Scans, then use your updated Norton and maybe download AVg or Anti Vir or Avast free versions and run a system check with one of those, then run your Spybot, Adware SE, and the Microsoft Spyware, run defrag and Disk Fixer, then you should pretty much have a clean system, then turn on System Restore and make a Restore point on that date and time and make a note, so that you know, this is a completely clean restore point.

One note if you make a Restore point, then turn it off, it won't save any restores that you have done, so once on with a nice clean restore point, keep it on to save it.

Wendy and Briggs... thank you will try your suggestions. Will turn it on.

No prob :)