Hello,
I'm using Norton Security Deluxe since about 1 month (I have already paid for 1 year license), under Windows 8.1 Pro, and during this month three times I had a problem.
The Norton icon in the system tray area changed to a kind of “warning” state: once it was an orange exclamation mark, and twice it was a red cross. All three times I was not able to open the Norton Security control panel: clicking on the system tray icon, or on “open Norton Security” from the right-click menu of the same icon, didn't have any effect. The last two times (one with orange and one with red warning), I was able to run a QuickScan from the right-click menu of the Norton system tray icon (didn't try this with the first red warning).
Rebooting the computer solves the problem, and Norton Security returns to function normally, with a green checkmark on its system tray icon.
One thing I noticed: the first red warning which I got was just the day after installing Norton (13/12/2015), the next one was one month later (13/01/2016), the latter one the same day which I got a Norton pop-up (on the desktop) about “We're not just an antivirus” and a button to “Learn more”. Perhaps this red warning (in this cases) has something to do with some licensing issue? (Anyway my license seems to be correctly active).
If I remember correctly, the two red warnings appeared a few minutes after system startup, while the orange one appeared several hours after system startup.
I checked the Security History in Norton before the red warning on 13/01/2016, but didn't find anything special; only “Info” severity items with a blue dot.
I noticed something else, but this could be unrelated to the above problems: a few times I opened the Norton Security control panel just after Windows startup, and for a fraction of a second the control panel didn't appear normally green, but orange or even red once. Then it turned green with “You are protected”. During this (and also before I opened the control panel), the Norton system tray icon was normal with a green checkmark (at least those times when I looked at it).
My main concern, since I'm not able to open the Norton control panel during this issues, is that Norton could be malfunctioning and may stop protecting the computer (and I could not notice this!). On the other hand, I was able to run a QuickScan during the issues, so this could be an indication that Norton is still working. But it could be working just partially.
Hopefully there's just a bug with opening the Norton control panel when there's a “warning” icon.
What do you think?
Thanks