After the high price i was offered a renewal from Symantec directly I decided to buy a brand new version directly from the local supplier. I though upgrading would be easy But it was far from it. In the past you could say I have taken the easy route and upgraded over the web but I felt it was cheaper to buy from a store. I put in the CD with Windows Vista 32 setup with NIS2012 installed and waited an age for the cd to boot in. Then I selected to install. After it went through the setup it stated that it was upgrading my existing security. And finally came up with the security screen. I was prompted to restart, thus I did so. It booted so far and then rebooted again, I guessed it was part of the setup process. Anyway gone is the Gadget which I used and nothing to say the security was working, not even an icon near the clock. I clicked on the desktop icon to get it going and did an update. At the end of the update I had to apply a patch, so I clicked apply and it restarted again. Once windows had rebooted in I did a security scan and all seemed fine. I then came here to find out where and why the sidebar gadget had gone. Then after prowling page after page I began getting security warnings telling me my virus scan was turned off and my security response was turned off amongst many more. Honestly I was like a pilot in a plane that was out of control.
I closed down the internet connection and to avoid anymore problems I had to boot into safe mode to uninstall the complete security suite and settings. I rebooted into Windows and had to reinstall NIS2013 as a new installation. Lucky I am not daft and keep a backup of my Identity safe data. The only problem was that The Identity safe is not the same as it was before so I had to reinvent a password protocol for that Environment.
I have since done my Laptop by uninstalling the program first without removing the data and the same for my Windows 7 Desktop setup. This way proved no issue with the upgrade. These days with money tight you have to shop around. If you can get the same product for cheaper in a shop rather than directly from the suppliers online it pays to shop around, but beware. you cannot do what you usually do when you update online. Besides when you buy the disc you get all the product and tools you need when your machine does have issues whereby you cannot get into your system.
I hope this helps some. Being online doesn't always guaruntee a working operating system.