Cannot Upgrade Norton 360

RitaD · ‎05-24-2012

When I try to upgrade Norton 360 I receive an error message: missing instopts.dat.

HarryP · ‎07-23-2010

Hi RitaD,

Welcome to Norton Community!

Which version of Norton product do you use currently?

Which Operating System do you use?

Do you have any other Security program already installed?

Thanks,

HarryP

RitaD · ‎05-24-2012

Norton Premier Edition Version 5.2.1.3

Windows XP

No other security programs

Thanks for your help!

SUBASH_PRABU · ‎05-31-2011

Open Command Prompt and type this command: del /q /f /s /a "%temp%\instopts.dat"

Restart and try to Upgrade norton.

RitaD · ‎05-24-2012

This did not resolve the problem. Perhaps I should have given you more information. When I try to upgrade Norton it tells me there is a program that I must delete: Norton Personal Firewall 2005. When I try to delete it from Control Panel it tells me it cannot uninstall it because it is missing instopts.dat.

yank · ‎12-02-2009

RitaD wrote:
This did not resolve the problem. Perhaps I should have given you more information. When I try to upgrade Norton it tells me there is a program that I must delete: Norton Personal Firewall 2005. When I try to delete it from Control Panel it tells me it cannot uninstall it because it is missing instopts.dat.

Hi Rita,

Hopefully Subash will come along as I know he is more knowledeable in this area than I am, and be able to provide addtional assistance if the following suggestion does not work.

As far as I can tell, Norton Personal Firewall is a discontinued Norton product as it was replace by the Smart Firewall which is a part of the N 360 you are installing.

There is a link for the Norton Removal Tool for the older Norton products here and it may work to uninstall the NPF 2005 without using the Control Panel. It is located here:

https://www-secure.symantec.com/norton-support/jsp/help-solutions.jsp?docid=kb20080710130643EN_EndUs...

Please let us know if this helps.

huwyngr · ‎04-13-2008

Rita,

I'm sure that will help -- I'm fairly certain I've seen someone here give instructions on how to edit the registry to get rid of the link to the application that have been uninstalled.

If no-one has a specific answer this is one occasion where in view of the error message I would run a registry cleaner if I did not know how to try to find the specific entry.

N360 has one but when I used it it did not tell me in advance what it was going to do and that bothers me but you could try it or you could download and install the free CCleaner which does tell you what it has found, makes you check which you want done and backs up the registry before doing it ....

If you do decide to get that you want the one in the left column and you can use either of the download sites -- I normally use their own Piriform one.

Let us know if you want to wait or try the CCleaner and if you have any questions.

Hugh

SUBASH_PRABU · ‎05-31-2011

Hi Rita

Please go here and then download and run the RnisUPG file, let us know how it goes. Its a Removal tool for Norton Personal Firewall 2003 and earlier, lets see if its removing the 2005 Version.

RitaD · ‎05-24-2012

I ran the RnisUPG file and received a message that it was successful. I tried to upgrade but got the same message that the Personal Firewall 2005 needed to be removed and when I try to do that it tells me that the instopts.dat is missing. I checked Control Panel Add/Delete Files and it's still there....worse than gum on a shoe!

Now Norton is telling me I need to fix a problem Error 3040, 20001

Help!