I am a registered user of NIS 2009 and Norton online backup. Well... i'd like to try the new beta release of Norton Internet Security 2010. Before doing this, i assume that i must use the Norton removal tool before installing the beta and after the removal process, i will lose the possibility to use NOB again, right? Is there a way to prevent Norton Removal Tool from getting rid of NOB in my computer? If not, i think i shall have to reinstall NOB: in this case will i keep my settings and backups.
It is a little bit longer (with respect to time), but it should save you a lot of hassle...
and you might find neat to have a "sandbox" to try out BETAs and other pieces of software (without having to reinstall your main system every time)
What about you install VirtualBox (www.virtualbox.org this is free)??? The application lets you create virtual machines (i.e., it's just like another computer, only it's all virtual and running on your current host).
Once you have virtualbox installed, perform a full Windows install as a virtual machine (it is quite straightforward).
Boot your new "virtual" Windows... TADA... you have a windows computer running inside your Windows PC. The 2 systems are pretty much independant from one another. Then you can simply install the beta for NIS 2010 in the virtual system... If you screw up the virtual machine, you can just delete it: no need for a full blown backup and recovery point on your main PC.
Just my $0.02... but I think it's worht mentioning <wink>
Thank you for your relevant replies. Very kind of you.
You know, as a former French member of Tall Emu's Online Armor beta tester team, i have quite an "arsenal" LOL, before testing or installing new softwares : Drive Clone Pro 6.04 by Farstone (an instant snapshot and imaging software which hacks the MBR to load before my French Vista system in case of recovery), Paragon Backup 9.0 etc...
So before using NRT, i did a snapshot in less than 10 secs with DCP and with the recovery CD of Paragon i did a RAW back up of my entire disk on a USB external Drive. I'm a very cautious guy as you can see LOL.
After all this, i launched NRT.... and what i suspected with some fear happened : NOB couldn't be used afterwards even though NIS 2009 was completely uninstalled. So i rolled back to the previous DCP snapshot with NIS 2009 installed and in 15 sec my system was back exactly to where it was before :-)
Then i adopted another strategy (i'm a warrior! LMAO) : i uninstalled NIS 2009 using Revo Uninstaller, removed useless entries in the registry using CCleaner, Ace Utilities and TuneUp Utilities. This time i could install the 2010 beta and NOB was still working like a charm! After one day of use with this Beta, i pinpointed the same bugs as those posted in the dedicated forum.. So now back to Norton 2009 with the new patch (i am one of the happy few who received it!) and everything is okay... so far so good!
As a conclusion, Norton Removal Tool removes everything related to Norton and disables the functionality of all the Symantec softwares, even those not included in the list you provided to me.
Thank you Chris to post a link to VirtualBox... i will give it a try some day in a near future.
I am a registered user of NIS 2009 and Norton online backup. Well... i'd like to try the new beta release of Norton Internet Security 2010. Before doing this, i assume that i must use the Norton removal tool before installing the beta and after the removal process, i will lose the possibility to use NOB again, right? Is there a way to prevent Norton Removal Tool from getting rid of NOB in my computer? If not, i think i shall have to reinstall NOB: in this case will i keep my settings and backups.