Major Problems using 'Tune Up'

[gyron1]

Hi Gents,

Seem to be in a lot of trouble here & need your help.

Reading an earlier thread on slow Boot-Up times I thought I would have a go at following the advice provided by Blencogo to speed things up - it has really screwed my laptop up (through no fault of Blencogo I hasten to add).

I have a Vaio PCG-Z1SP 1GB RAM, Windows XP-Pro laptop.

My original Boot-up time was c 5.5 minutes. Deleted conyents of PreFetch folder, installed Tune-Up (www.tune-up.com), and performed the Disc Clean up > result, Boot-Up time now 7 minutes! Then (only) ran Tune-Up Internet Optimizer which found 495 Registry Problems, 349 Program Problems (Registry structure & Temporary Folders reported as OK). Didn't run Tune-Up registry Clean up etc 'cos don't like playing around with the registry!

What am I left with after just doing the above;

1) Total Boot-Up time now approaching 10 minutes
2) Norton Antivirus damaged beyond repair (had to have reinstalled by Symantec)
3) Norton Firewall now inoperative (has to be re-installed)
4) MSN Explorer Welcome page auto boots and can't get rid of it (I use Microsoft Internet Explorer - used when required). How do I get rid of MSN auto boot home page?
5)All of my Desktop short-cuts report an error when I try to start applications (recycle bin, My Documents File, Outlook Express, Internet Explorer etc etc. The message on all these is
'#msntb_toolbar_full_name# unable to load its config file'
pressing OK then opens page!
6) Now just waiting for the Norton Anti Virus software to go down again after a two hour uninstall/reinstall saga yesterday!

I now wish I had left everything alone - a computer which has given me excellent service for nearly 4 years is now in a mess!!

Reading various literature (after the event), it would appear that you are not advised to use third party Tune-Up software 'cos it screws up Windows XP Pro - I can confirm that it has done me no good.

Anyway guys, any ideas how I can recify the above errors and restore my originally bad Boot-Up time of c 5 minutes (think I will live with that).

Help, any help appreciated.

Thank you.

Gyron

[MattWilson]

Backup everything you need and use the recovery disks or recovery partition to restore your vaio back to factory settings and start all over again. This should actually make you vaio boot up much faster and to be honest is the best way to speed everything up!

[gyron1]

Hi Matt,

Apologies for not responding to your reply earlier. I guess your adice is the the best option but I am desperately trying to resist this option if at all possible.

Have written to TuneUp for ther adice/comments - no reply as yet.

Kind regards,

Gyron

[apierc1]

you could try a system resotre point for before you downloaded tune up, but they never work for me on my vaio

[Blencogo]

I'm not sure what's happened here. I have never heard of Tune-Up Utilities causing any problems like this on any system - it is one of the gentler and more stable utilities.

I am a little confused about what exactly you have run because the Internet Optimiser does not even look for Registry and Program Problems and only looks at TCP/IP issues. I think you must have run the Disc Cleaner and/or Registry Cleaner. I would be surprised if these tools would cause the problems you are describing.

Anyway, the good news is that Tune-Up does have a Rescue Centre where you can undo all the changes made by the program and return it to the state it was in before you ran the program. (That is if Tune-Up actually caused them). Just click on Rescue Centre and highlight the backups created and choose Undo.

Alternatively run a System Restore in XP (Start-> All Programs-> Accessories->System Tools->System Restore) to a Restore Point just before you installed Tune-Up.

[tonybeard]

If your registry is showing more that 3 % defragmentation it will not run. Right click on on all the task bar programs and turn them off. Run Tune -Ups registry defragmentation utility and that should fix it but make sure you defragement as well and scan for viruses

[gyron1]

Thanks Gents for all your very useful help and advice, sorry for delay in replying to you all individually.
Gyron