Norton has long had a problem with system restore; these days, the solution is fairly simple--the autofix--but is still time consuming. But I ran into another issue that puzzles me. I just restored an image I had made on December 2. I had renewed my subscription sometime in October, good for another year. When the image was made, Norton was installed and active, and my subscription was current. When I first booted from the restored image, the Norton icon was a healthy green for a moment, and I was able to browse the internet. After a moment, though, the icon turned red and Norton told me that my subscription had expired and that the program was disabled. At the same time, Windows informed me that I had a problem because there was no active antivirus or firewall, and I needed to turn on the Windows firewall and make it the default. So I did that, since the firewall is my main concern, and I tried to go to Norton via the Norton gui (which opens Firefox) to check my account, but I could not get there. Windows network troubleshooter told me that Norton was blocking the internet. I am puzzled as to how it could simultaneously be disabled and blocking the internet at the same time. Anyway, what I quickly did was uninstall Norton using the removal tool, then reinstalled it, and upon reinstall, everything worked fine. I cannot figure out why this particular incarnation of Norton behaved that way. I am not particularly concerned about getting a virus during that first moment or two, but I am concerned about being without an active firewall even for a few seconds, so I would like to know whether I was without one. I remember reading about a test PCWorld reported on several years ago that found that an unprotected computer would get hacked in something like 45 seconds.
Separately from that, I continue to wonder WHY Norton has such a continuing problem with system restore.