h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

yes it is an Epson printer.......

Anyway, this is what I have done so far:
I have run disk cleanup on both sides of the disk. It said there were no probs. Didn't seem to take very long, which I thought was unusual.
I checked about the printer alias-yes, it is hiding-the app is somewhere else. Still doesn't really solve my printer probs, but I'll have to work on that one.
I checked the Norton alias. It is the Norton Antivirus app which is posing as an alias in the app folder, while the real one is in Norton solutions. But, both files are behaving the same-neither will open autoprotect preferences or Norton quickmenu preferences. Each time I go to load the preferences I get an error message which says 'cannot open..' Having said that, Norton seemed to be operating normally in as much as it tried to scan the mac install disk when I rebooted the machine after running disk cleanup. but, as I said, the autoprotect file seems to have gone awol-I can't see it in the finder and when I searched for it all I could find was an autoprotect pkg file, an installer, which seemed to be found in 'receipts'?????
So, I think it might be the following:
The preference files aren't working.
or, the failed update I did for virus defs didn't work, and I'm stuck with a corrupted file-my virus defs aren't up to date and the license key is not working properly, plus, my ISP keeps cutting me off which doesn't help!
Or, when I reintalled Norton v.10 it didn't work and reverted to 0.9 version, which would explain why the autoprotect isn't in my finder-it isn't for version.
re my ISP, annoyingly I'm still on dial up, and I know they will cut people off after a certain amount of time, but this mucks up any software or virus updates. Anyone know how I can stick either of these updates into download manager so that they will pause til the next time I go online, rather than failing and having to start all over again (and running up the phone bill!).
Any thoughts people?
thanks for your help so far, really appreciate it as a mac novice.

Kaz.

I've lost site of what the actual problem is. We've established that your alias files are doing exactly what they should, and that your printer has dried-up ink in the print head, but I'm not sure I understand what you expect Norton to be doing that it is not doing - are you sure that they didn't just change something with the update? If it doesn't do what you expect, that might just mean that you expect it to do something that it shouldn't.

You're not supposed to open the preference file directly. If you want to reset the preferences, just throw it in the trash and Norton will create a new one.

And the "Receipts" folder is just a kind of record of what's been installed and where it is supposed to go. You can pretty much ignore it, but if you are running critically low on disk space it's *may* be OK to delete some of those files.

It will create new preferences?-wicked!

Where would I go to find the preference files so I can chuck them then? (sorry did you tell me before?) Can I just ditch what I see in the system pref pane that relates to Norton, will that do it?

I appreciate your help, I'm really sorry this has got so confusing, I just wanted to know what the hell was going on and whether it was normal or not - if I needed to fix anything!
I'm glad I checked with you guys because I probably would've gone and tried to get someone to look at the thing for no reason, so thanks!

I wondered if the receipts thing might be something to do with purchased downloads/installs etc. I'll leave it be.
Thanks for your help. Now I feel like I actually know a bit more about how mac works. I can't help it you know, been using PC's for ages til I went to uni then I figured macs were much better-its just taken me a while to figure how its all put together if you get what I mean.
I swear macs are like the -bigger on the inside!
Thanks

Kaz

Preferences can be found in the Library folder in the following places.
1. In your home folder.
2. In the hard drive finder window.

To find either go to the Dock and click the finder icon at the left (if you dock is at the bottom of the screen). Look in the Library folder for Preferences (not Pref Panes) on the hard drive or for Preferences in your home folder.

Look for anything related to Norton and Symantec including any file called com.norton or com.symantec. Put them in the Trash but don't empty the Trash until you have done a restart and launched Norton again just in case you need the old preference files.

turvy

thanks turvy