I have a client who had the following on his computer:
NIS 2008
NSW 2008 Basic (just about out of subscription)
Norton Save & Restore, ver. 1 (just about out of subscription).
I installed NIS 2009 over NIS 2008. Install went perfect, no problems except for the expected warning from NSW due to its not finding an AV.
Instead of working with a program about to run out of time, I got him the trial version of NSW 2009 Basic, again installing over the previous version. Again the installation went smoothly, loading with the almost expired Activation Key of the 2008 version, BUT this time the Warning Flag was still up and subsequent updates didn't fix it. Not only that, but the warning was coming from the Norton Security Center, which was supposed to be removed from NSW 2009 Basic.
The mystery was solved shortly - NSC was not being loaded by NSW, but by Norton Save & Restore. The old version 1 was just not being maintained by Symantec (probably because most subscriptions had lapsed and it wasn't being renewed by Norton).
So now we had a dilemma: Should we buy separate products NSW 2009 Basic and Save & Restore, version 2; or spend almost the same amount of money and get NSW 2009 Premiere Edition and get both? Now that might sound a no-brainer, but if he decided during the year that S&R wasn't working for him and wanted to quit that product but get an upgrade to NSW when it comes out, he wouldn't be able to do that and continue the subscription.
We decided to give it a couple of weeks (using up the remaining subscription and finding out how things worked together). It was good that we did, though it wasted a lot of my time (I don't bill for my screw-ups).
The first symptom was that his computer would shut down within a minute or so of getting to the desktop. It would shut down to a shimmery greyish-screen (the kind of screen you see between the intial windows display and the log-in display. It would be locked there, power still on, unresponsive to any keys or key combinations, no matter how long we tried to wait it out. We needed the 10-second power down fix; and that would be followed almost every time by a checkdisk from the computer.
My first thought was degrading harddrive, so I ran a series of checkdisks, but they all came out fine. Unfortunately, the shut-down was different than anything I have seen and I could find neither indicators in System Event nor any minidumps.
So I used MSconfig for a selective start-up and after a long series of trial-and-error, identified the culprit: Norton Save & Restore. If it was on, the computer usually, but not always, crashed. If it was off, it never crashed.
Time to experiment: I uninstalled NS&Rv1. Everything was perfect over a dozen reboots.
Downloaded trial version of NS&Rv2, just to find out what would happen.
Now, every time we arrived at the desktop, we crashed. Over and over and over.
I used Safe Mode, ran MSConfig, blocked NS&R. Rebooted. Still crashed in normal mode! Every time! What was happening?
I decided it had to be a collision of artifact and new product. Something left from version 1 had been tricked by version 2. I also think that blocking NS&R didn't solve the problem because the product was in the last stage of completing installation (just prior to activation) and the installer was bumping into that something that caused the crash.
If I had had more time -- or this was at my house -- I would have explored this in depth; but I didn't and it wasn't, so I didn't.
You can't use ADD/REMOVE to get rid of NS&R in Safe Mode, so I used the Norton Removal Tool. Worked like a charm.
But just in case, I booted up my NSW 2008 disk and ran WinDoctor from the CD. I discover about a dozen bad registry entries for Norton or Symantec (I am not talking about shortcuts). I deleted all of these.
Reinstalled NIS 2009.
Downloaded and installed trial version of NSW 2009 PE.
Ran this version of WinDoctor and found some more registry entries to delete.
Did NOT reinstall NS&R yet.
Everything is working fine - a dozen reboots, but no crashes, no check disks, no warnings from a Norton Security Center; in fact, no Norton Security Center.
I will give it about 4 or 5 days, then see what NS&R v2 does. If it behaves properly, we'll decide which combo to buy. If it doesn't, it's probably time for Acronis.
So, what would the Symantec Techies like me to do when I install NS&R v2? Any special prep? If we have the same crashes, what kind of data should I collect?