EDIT: I realize this is a lengthy post, but please do read the whole thing before responding as I go over what I have already done to try and resolve this issue on my own before making this post.
Up until last week, I was happily running Norton Internet Security 2009 on my computer running Windows 7 RC1 (x64). I had just a little over a month left on my subscription, so I went online to the Norton site when I came across the 2010 beta. I have a thing for beta-testing software that I use, so I downloaded the beta and proceeded to uninstall NIS2009 (problems overwriting NIS in the past has taught me uninstalling first is usually the best thing to do) before installing NIS2010.
The installer proceeded fine until it got to the part where it was going to launch NIS. The window said there were about 10 seconds left remaining in the process. I imagined this was how long it was going to take to load all the necessary initial settings and what not. A few minutes later, the window closes, and I have nothing. I figured, maybe my computer just needed a reboot. So I did.
Upon loading my desktop, it seemed like my system was once again attempting to load NIS but to no avail. I then proceeded to manually start it. I could hear my hard drives whirring with activity, but after a few minutes, there was still nothing. I decided to see if I could find something on the web regarding this, and it was then that I noticed that I no longer had an internet connection. I disabled/re-enabled my network adapters, restarted my router, restarted my modem, and nothing fixed it. I knew it was a problem with my local machine when I found the other machines on my network to be unaffected, even after rebooting them.
I suspected it was the beta software causing the problem, so I decided to just uninstall it and go back to NIS2009. After uninstalling NIS2010, rebooting, reinstalling NIS2009, and rebooting once more, I still had the same problem. This time, NIS2009 was not starting up either, and I still did not have a network connection after the installation. It should be noted that in between the installations (after NIS2010 was uninstalled and before NIS2009 was installed), my network connection was working. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out what was going wrong.
It just so happened that I had recently ordered a new hard drive. I figured, since I had to reinstall everything anyway, this was a good time to root out any other possible causes of the problem. Please note, before all this started, NIS2009 was working just fine on my machine running Windows 7 RC1 (x64).
I installed the new hard drive and proceeded to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 RC1 (x64) on it. After the installation completed, the first thing I tried to install was the beta, since I really did want to use it. Unfortunately, I encountered the exact same problem. I decided to completely give up on the beta and commit to going back to NIS2009, but I wanted to be sure I had a clean installation to work with again. Luckily, I have two 10,000 RPM hard drives in RAID 0, so going through a second reinstallation of Windows wasn't too big of a deal. Now I get to the part that threw me over the edge.
With a fresh new installation of Windows and nothing else installed, my installation of NIS 2009 produced the same problems: failure to launch software and disabled network adapter(s). Thinking it may have been a Windows update that may have been needed, I proceeded to fully update my copy of Windows 7. Several hours later and fully up to date, I am still unable to get NIS to run and my network adapter working.
It may also be worth noting that after the second installation of the beta (on fresh Windows installation), while I was waiting for it to launch, I opened up my browser to check my email and noticed that IE was going through a proxy server. I have never seen this before, but perhaps it was only because things were going really slowly. After the window that said it was launching NIS eventually closed, I lost my internet connection.
I am currently running my system protected only by my network firewall. I'm not too worried about any viruses or spyware because I tend to be cautious with my internet activities, but you never know. I really don't understand how I can be having this problem if I didn't before. I have always been a proud and happy user of NIS, but with this latest predicament, I really don't know how to feel anymore.
I sure hope someone out there can help me. My subscription expires at the end of the month, and if I can't get this working, there's clearly no point in renewing.
PS: As a temporary solution, I have tried to install other IS suites, but they all seem to be suffering the same problem now. This leads me to believe it's a problem with my system and/or hardware. Of course, as this post makes very clear, I did not have this problem before attempting to install the NIS 2010 beta.