Installed latest patch to ver 22.21.2.50. Received a patch failed to install and to reboot. Now Smart Firewall is turned off and cannot be turned on. It is greyed out. All tabs in settings are greyed out. After reboot program ran correctly and Smart Firewall was on. While in settings Smart Firewall turned off and again all tabs in settings went grey. Used the program's auto fix utility and it found nothing wrong. Using on Windows 10 v1909 on HP Spectre. Laptop is hardly used but updated weekly. Any suggestions? Thanks.
[Edit: Clarified subject]
That's great news. Thanks for posting back.
Good Morning,
Just want to give you an update. I was on windows 1909 and was unable to get the Win 2004 update in May because of the Conexant audio driver issue. Yesterday, Win Update gave me Win 20H2. It stalled at 61% and appears to happen because of the audio drivers. I uninstalled all audio drivers and started the update again. After about 4 hours of installing it finally succeeded. I reinstalled the latest Conexant drivers and all works well. Interestingly, Norton 360 is now operating properly. Smart firewall and antimalware settings are accessible and it doesn’t turn itself off. I want to thank you for your help and suggestions and taking the time to answer my inquiries.
If the original reinstall did not resolve the issue, then it is worth trying the full removal.
No. I believe I just checked remove and reinstall. It saved my original settings. Should I do a complete removal, download and log in with my info?
When you used the Norton Removal and Reinstall tool did you use the Advanced Options > Remove Only?
The issue with the firewall is still happening. Reboot, I set firewall to on, a few minutes later it turns off and all antivirus and exploit settings grey out. Only in ver 22.21.2.50 not in the previous ver 22.21.1.151. I'm tempted to run the remove and reinstall tool again. But, that gives me the older version and then the patch shows up on the live update. Wish I could avoid the patch until this is resolved. I would install in safe mode, but, I don't think that is possible. I'll just wait and see if anyone else experiences this issue. Maybe it's unique to my system. Thanks for your assistance.
Is this issue with the firewall still happening, or are you just going over what you saw before? Hopefully your reinstall resolved things.
As for protection, even with the firewall inactive, the other layers of the protection would kick in if something did try to get into your system.
Thank you for your reply. That makes sense. However, it is very unnerving to see that part of the protection is turned off. When I reboot the pc and go into settings I can tick the check box for smart firewall. When I open settings smart firewall is still turned off. I turn that on and within a few minutes a pop up box tells me that I turned off smart firewall. I click fix and the box goes away. I go back into settings and see again that the smart firewall is turned off. How vulnerable does that make me? I have been using Norton/Symantec for a couple decades and never saw this. I don't want to use another service, but, if I'm not protected I might just as well use Defender.
The latest patched version is still being released in a phased manner to check for bugs etc. The version you download from your Norton Account usually takes a couple of weeks after the new version has been fully deployed.
As for your new desktop, if you do decide you try Norton on it, be sure you fully remove the McAfee using the removal utility before installing Norton.
Thanks for replying so quickly. No updates were available. Repeated several times. Checked the Restart option and it is off. Rebooted again with no success. Used the Remove and Reinstall tool. Never got a message to restart. After 5 minutes I restarted. (BTW, I quit Malwarebytes and set it to not start with Windows). Logged into my Norton account and downloaded 360. It seems to be working properly. However, the version is 22.21.1.151. When I performed an update the patch took it to 22.21.2.50 and that's when the issue started. Not sure if I want to install the patch if it shows up again, but, Norton will probably do it automatically. If it does and the same issue arises then I will end my use of Norton.
I purchased a new Dell desktop that came with McAfee. Using that. I have a Norton account with up to 5 devices. Afraid of installing 360 on desktop and possibly running into the same problem.
Run LiveUpdate manually a few times, restarting as necessary, until no updates are available. After a patch, there are often a couple of more updates that are now available for the updated version.
Also, be sure you are using the Restart option, not Shutdown and startup again if you have Windows Fast Startup feature enabled. If you use Windows 8/8.1 or 10, there can be an issue with the Windows Fast Startup feature.. See more information here.