I have Win 7 Home Premium running on a HP Laptop. I loaded Win 7 on top of Vista several weeks ago, and had no problems with the load or with the PC since. I tried to move files from my Dell XP desktop to my Win 7 laptop (over my Cisco Router), but XP says I don't have access to the HP laptop. Yesterday I read an article in PC World on getting Win 7 PC to share files with XP PCs. I am in a hotel and decided to try Homegroup setup (even though I have no network to access). Using my Win 7 laptop I clicked on "C:\", then hit "Share With" and choose option to read and write my "C" drive. I do not recall all the security questions that came up, but somehow the Lock (padlock) symbol appeared next to about eight of my folders. When I tried to use Firefox, it would not load. When I try to open it I get "Firefox had a problem & crashed. Will try and restore your tabs & windows". It tries to restart but gives same error over and over. When I opened IE 8 it gives me "A program on your PC has corrupted your default search provider setting for IE. IE has reset the setting to your origional search provider, google". Then I get a second window to choose my search provider. I choose google and close the window, but every time I open IE 8, I get the same error message. I tried to run System Restore, but get "System restore did not complete successfully. Your computer system files and setting were not changed. System restore could not access a file. There is probably an anti-virus program running". I disabled Norton anti-virus and firewall and ran restore again, but got same message. I chose a different restore date, but get same message. Not sure if the padlock form Homegroup locked some folders and that prevents restore from working, but I am dead in the water. Appreciate any advise to get my restore to work. rbvett@yahoo.com

Hello Ron, Norton products do have a feature called "Norton Product Tamper Protection". The feature needs to be disabled in order System Restore to work. If the Norton product you are using also includes a firewall, it might be that you need to properly configure it to work over the network. For more details, please see: "Restoration Incomplete. Your computer cannot be restored..." when I run Windows System Restore with a Norton 2010 product installed http://www.symantec.com/norton/support/kb/web_view.jsp?wv_type=public_web&docurl=20091030142819EN&ln=en_US HomeGroup and Firewall Interaction http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=937f3930-673d-45a0-8446-69c36e6f5c13Eric

Eric; Thank you for the suggestion. I turned off "Norton product tamper protection" and I ran restore fine. Running restore did fix the issue with IE8. It now loads and works as usual. Firefox still gives me an error message "could not initialize application....". It does finally open Firefox, and I am sending this to you from Firefox. Restore did not remove the padlock icon from the following folders on my "C" drive: $inplace.~TR $windows.~Q users\ron All this started when I tried to setup Homegroup last night in the hotel. I have no network to setup to and when I ran Homegroup it placed the padlock on several of the folders. For some reason, when I click on an Excel file to open it, it then gives me the error message "there was a problem sending the command to the program". Excel does open, but does not open the file I clicked on. If I go to "File", "open in Excel, I can pick a file and it opens fine. Since the problem started with my trying to run Homegroup, I think it may be fixed if I can remove Homegroup, or at least remove it from running. Do you have a suggestion on how I can remove the Homegroup influence (don't think Microsoft will let me unload Homegroup). I really appreciate your help, and hope you have time to offer a suggestion. Thanks; Ron rbvett@yahoo.com

To remove a computer from a homegroup, follow these steps: Open HomeGroup by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, typing homegroup in the search box, and then clicking HomeGroup. Click Leave the homegroup. Click Leave the homegroup, and then click Finish. Eric