Epic fail! Live update failed. Norton Internet Security fails to start and uninstall

Live update failed taking Norton Internet Security 2010 with it. NIS doesn’t load at startup and I’ve been exposed for six weeks. Wasn’t alerted to problem, had to go to windows event viewer to find out when this started happening. Tried to restore system but now all my restore points are gone! So now I can’t start NIS because none of the exes work and neither does the services. The uninstall shortcut can’t find the program. What do I do now? Even if I remove this via software removal tool, how can I prevent it from happening again? How can I trust that it won’t leave me completely exposed again?