NIs 2012 nightmare

Hi there,

as a newbie I don't know where this goes, and please remember that I'm computer illerterate.

Last year I purchased a new Packard Bell home computer, they installed Norton 360; the subscription was on the last day when I went to install NIS 2012, shop purchased CD.

I followed the instructions on the leaflet, and was happily proceeding,the message about unistalling Norton 360, I agreed, a short while later it auto shut down and rebooted, and then nothing. I checked my computer and my CD drive was not showing, I looked at the device manager which showed a conflict. It was telling me that there was a driver error, so I followed tne instructions and tried to update the driver but was informed that it was installed correctly.I tried rebooting but to my horror I had lost most of my programs

at this point I shut down and contacted a friend. His livelihood is building and repairing computers, his 1st comment was that Norton is a nightmare, and should be avoided. However, it was too late, he came to my rescue and spent three hours having to try and rescue my stuff, fortunately there was a mirror image to go to, but then the time was taken to update all my information. I was  not impressed, and refused to try again installing NIS 2012, and there was no way it was going on my laptop. Since then I have spoken to several people who all expressed difficulties, and that it was best to un install the early version, and then it was straight forward. It does not say anything about doing that in the instructions, so I'll be going back to the shop for a refund, hopefully that will be successfull and then the end of this nightmare. Thank you.