I had this problem this morning (November 16, 2008) having had no problems with NIS 2008 to date.
There was one thing that I changed, and when I undid it the problem ceased.
I have Microsoft Office Professional 2003 on this HP Pavilion a475c with Windows XP Home. Yesterday, I decided to enable caching for Outlook 2003 so that I do not always have to use the VPN to connect to my office.
The computer had been turned off overnight. When I started it this morning the message Symantec Service Framework stops working popped up and the green Norton checkbox in the lower right disappeared. This always took just about 7 minutes after logging into the affected user. Other users on this computer were not affected. It took a couple of hours trying to figure out what I had done. When I undid the Outlook caching option and deleted the 239 MB outlook.ost file the problem stopped.
During the problem diagnosis period I was finding that Internet Explorer would lock up and then the mouse would look up and then the keyboard would act funny after getting the dreaded message “Symantec Service Framework has stopped working and needs to close.”
I discovered that there is a free upgrade to NIS 2009. That is the first I have heard of the offer. Last year I got a message from Symantec offering NIS 2008 to current users of NIS 2007.
I am not sure if this will be of any use to anyone, but, seeing the frustration out there on this topic I decided to post it.
Thomas