<< Are you suggesting that an older program/application is causing the problem even though everything was fine until the file referenced above was installed/modified? >>

Absolutely! 

I'm reporting what I experienced last year when this first cropped up with the V1 > V2 of N360 since I was the one who brought it up here with Norton who then tracked it down to the situation with PowerDesk. Do a search in the N360 Forum on [PowerDesk crash V2] and I'm sure you will see exactly that complete with Microsoft's blaming Norton when it was PowerDesk and the change that Microsoft made that triggered the event.

Add to that the current experience of at least one user totally dogmatic that it had to be Norton for the reasons you give and coming back after analysis having found the specific program that caused it. 

I think martike has the best experience and suggestions since so far Norton have no evidence that they can change anything in their programs.