No joke. I've been dealing with this, as I know many of you have, for several months now and it has been frustrating me to no end. I've performed every fix known to Symantec and beyond, to no avail. The issue was solved today.
I woke up this morning with no internet on my Win7 computer that has had the many Norton problems. It worked fine last night, so I thought I had a virus. So, I chatted with a nice fellow on Symantec's live chat, to no avail. I was connected with a level 2 tech, chatted with her, was connected with a level 1 tech (with no help whatsoever) and was given a phone number to Microsoft's support. After SEVEN constant hours on the phone with this wonderful woman in the Phillipines, she solved the issue.
While many tech-savvy people have suggested on this forum that changing from an admin to standard user would solve the issue, they were only partially correct. My user account was infected and corrupted. It seems that some Microsoft updates are the culprit. So, she had me delete the recent MS updates, created a brand new admin account for me, transfered all of the files under the old account to the new one, and deleted the infected account. That was after it took 3 1/2 hours to figure out how to get my internet back up and remotely access my computer so she could work her magic. I didn't mind at all getting a cauliflower ear after 7 hours on the phone with her. What she did - WORKED.
I suggest to anyone going through this, that you follow the above advice. If you're not tech-savvy, any of the technicians that follow this forum can walk you through it.
I'll check back in a couple of days to relay my PC's progress - just to make sure. But at this moment, I'm one happy woman.