Thanks for the suggestion - been there done that to no avail, and all the other microsoft fixes.

Finally solved the problem, see my previous post regarding registery permissions. Somehow NIS 2012 has changed these during the reinstallation which is very worrying.

I will watch these pages to see how seriously Symantec take this problem as I haven't been impressed with their poor Customer Focus over the last year or so. For example Identity Safe had been plauged with numerous compatibility issues causing users mega problems without any satisfactory fixes

Regards

Mike