Norton Antivirus (NAV) fiasco:
System Win 7, Windows Virtual PC. In Windows XP SP3 Mode. In this mode with an active Norton Antivirus license this is what happened.
1st attempt: With 197 days remaining on my antivirus subscription/license I tried to upgrade to the new green face of Norton through its user face with an online download. It worked until I restart the VPC XP Mode system and the icon in the system tray did not load and the program did not run.
Using the installation software on the desktop I removed and reinstalled the NAV software and it seemed to take. Not so!
2nd attempt installing NAV from the internet again the same thing happened. I do not have the original Norton CD, it’s in Florida and I’m in Colorado.
3rd attempt: This time I removed the program using Windows XP removal tool in the control panel and got the following message. The procedure entry point VSSFREESNAPSHOT PROPERTIES INTERNAL could not be located in the dynamic link library VSSAPI.DLL with an Error code 8504, 104. I ignored the message as no solution was available on the website as instructed.
4th attempt: I removed again using the control panel and decided to look for another anti-virus software. Where into 2-3 days now restarting both Win 7 and Win VPC XP Mode several and alternating times.
I remembered I had a Norton Internet Security (NIS) disc with one license left and decided to try and load that from the CD. On loading, the message from the loading CD was to download from the internet as “recommended.” So now I’m loading from the internet Norton Internet Security, not Norton antivirus. This was done and activated. Problem solved.
Not so fast after a couple of restarts of the VPC NIS failed to start. And I was back to the beginning with no NAV which I paid for and had 197 days remaining but even more time, about a year, on the NIS which a few days before I renewed through the end of August 2016.
5th attempt: Being stubborn and Irish(some may say that’s the problem) having slept on the problem I thought I would try to load the NIS from the CD and not take the recommended path to the Internet for the software. I did this and it was activated without trouble and the face of NIS is the previous GUI with a black background, not the white background of the new GUI with lots of green letters.
I had to download updates for a couple of years, 285mb as I recall but it continued to work and has provided the security I need for the past 3 days with no problems. This final install appears to have worked and the icon in the system tray is there and active although the GUI is the older version with the system tools I would liked to have had. But I can live without that as those tools are available in the Microsoft accessory folder.
My reason for writing is twofold.
What happens if an update moves me to the new user interface? The software has been updated and scans have been run. Can I expect NIS to fail to load on restart do to an issue with that new software?
Is Norton aware of a problem in loading NIS or NAV on Virtual PC’S Running Windows XP SP3, an operating system that which is supported by Symantec on the box?