OS: XP SP3
Norton Version (from Support menu): 21.3.0.12
Error message in Windows Event Viewer:
Faulting application nis.exe, version 12.11.2.9, faulting module winhttp.dll, version 5.1.2600.6175, fault address 0x0004502f.
Behavior:
Windows will display a fault message that Nis.exe needs to close. Sometimes Nis.exe will restart itself while other times it does not. In cases where Nis.exe does not restart itself, opening the UI via the shortcut in the Start Menu will restart Nis.exe but it will eventually crash again as you move around the UI.
Note: The initial crash does not require you to be using the Norton UI. In my case, I was away from my computer and it was locked. When I later returned and unlocked it, Nis.exe had crashed (leaving me unprotected for approximately 9 hours based on the timestamp in the event log).
Suggestion:
Create a secondary process who's only job is to poll the existance of Nis.exe and in the event it crashes, restart it. I realize that Nis.exe has an autorecovery mechanism built in but sometimes it doesn't trigger which leaves a computer unprotected.
One possible method would be to use WMI to listen for application termination events, another would be to poll active processes at a specified interval.
Note: I have written a small test program for myself that does this and it works.