Similarly to Ninko's thread from May, I a physical copy of NIS 2010 from a reputable retailer late last year, and when I tried to renew NIS 2009, previous to installing the 2010, I got error 8505,118 telling me only that there was an error, I couldn't renew, and had to install a removal tool, remove 2009, and reinstall it, with the implication that THEN I could renew/upgrade. My intention was to renew/upgrade on two PCs, both running the same product code of NIS 2009--one PC had XP Home, and did not display the error; the other had Vista Business and did.
Rather than go through uninstalling and reinstalling NIS 2009, for the sole purpose of replacing it with NIS 2010, I was helped by Norton Tech Support, who used remote access to (I believe remove) NIS 2009 and install NIS 2010. Then I activated with the new product code, and was able to renew my NIS subscription and install NIS 2010 on the second PC with no problem.
This is not the first time I have purchased NIS from retailers, since they often have hefty rebates; this is the first time in several years I've had anything like problem like this.
It does bother me that this error should only show up when I tried to renew: It raises the question how confident I can be that Norton can identify and stop malware, when it can't do the same for its own errors, until it's too late. If the error exists, what's the effect on the functioning of NIS? Clearly I have zero confidence in the solution given on the website, and was fortunate to arrive at a satisfactory resolution with tech support.
I hope that also responds to OscarL's question whether anyone else had run into this error. My question is how many people DID run into this error and went through the process of using the removal tool and uninstall NIS 2009 and re-install it before renewing and/or upgrading, which seems such a waste of time?