What is so sad, is that Norton Online Family Safety Minder is currently operating in a defective condition on Norton's servers. There is nothing wrong with the software side that is downloaded onto your PC, because you and a million other Norton users are experiencing the exact same problem. The problem is across IE 9, IE 8 and IE 7 and across all operating systems including XP Home, Xp-Pro, Vista, windows 7. I called Norton trouble shooting telephone numbers in an effort to get an "English" speaking technician without an "Indian" accent that I could understand and that could understand what I was trying to tell them, but to no avail, and sadly they tried to tell me it was a conflict on our computer. They wouldn't understand that not only did I uninstall and reinstall Norton Online Family Safety Minder three times successfully . . . then when that didn't solve it did a restore from a known "good" backup using Norton Ghost (disk imaging software), when that didn't fix it, did a clean install of XP-pro from scratch with the only thing loaded on top was Norton Anti-Virus and Norton Online Family Safety Minder, and it all failed the same way. In testing I discovered when you go to the Norton Online Family Safety Minder website, and "turn-off" the filtering from there using your account and password, that all of a sudden everything clears up. Therefore, it is Norton Online Family Safety Minder's servers that are all in failure, and their filtering is in failure causing the results we are all getting . . . bottleneck, freezing, never loading up websites after it crawls along like a snail while you sit and punch the computer screen. But wait, don't get mad at your computer, because when I notified "Comcast" our internet provider who supplies Norton Anti Virus and Norton Online Family Safety Minder to us part of what we are paying for, Comcast sent me back to the same Norton tech numbers, and the same call center in Asia where you can't understand a thing they say or do! I am suggesting to Comcast that they drop Norton, and find another vendor, because this is unacceptable to have Norton throw and Indian speaking dip at you, while they refuse to take a look at their own servers and fix their internal problem with a qualified in house technician of their own. Meanwhile, your child and mine, are unprotected online, because Norton Online Family Safety Minder just failed and stopped working for no apparent reason just about 2 weeks ago , and Norton REFUSES TO EVEN LOOK AT THEIR OWN PROBLEM, BECAUSE IT"S STUCK IN THE HANDS OF AN INFERIOR NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING DIP! ....
Hi comeonfedup,
The team is currently working on the issue. I'll post an update as soon as I get any news on the issue.
Thanks for you patience,
Katie
Wow, this is 11/26 and server is still down. Customer service says 12-48 hrs to fix? We will see what happens!!!
Yes its true, these guys are the closest thing to idiots you will ever find. If I ran my business the way Norton does I would be out of business long ago. I talked to a VP at Comcast our ISP, and personally requested he put in motion finding another vendor and dropping Norton all together, especially since we pay Comcast to provide Norton Online Family and Norton Security to us Comcast customers. when I told the VP the entire disgust I have had with Norton and the whole story going back months, he seemed unaware of the Norton failure. Now he is aware. So pass the word along to your ISP's who provide you Norton as part of your cost, and get them to drop Norton completely and go with another vendor. My child and yours have been unsafe on the net ever since Norton screwed up their servers and refuses to do nothing to fix it for months. At one point, it appeared that Norton probably restored their servers from a good backup and had it running for awhile since I 1st posted the complaint. But once again, across the screen cam the horrible "Norton Family has updates for this computer. A restart is needed to install the updates. Click "yes" to install updates and restart your computer or "No" to update later. do you want to restart now?" Well we all know where clicking "yes" got us, a totally failed computer that froze the web browser on my childs account, thusly freezing the entire screen forcing us to shut down the computer, and restore the entire computer from a known good backup saved using another Norton product called Norton Ghost (this is one of the only Norton products to actually work correctly every time). Once the entire computer was restored, we made sure to click "no" when the Norton Family update screen showed again, however clicking "no" leaves your childs account totally unprotected as nothing is filtered as the whole Online Family fails again, but at least no screen or web browser freezes, just no filtering. Problem is, that stupid Norton family update screen keeps re-appearing forcing you to deal with it . . . click "yes" and have your childs acount and web browser frozen again. I mentioned punching the computer screen in my 1st post. How about putting to task the idiots at Norton who are screwing up everything across thousands of computers. How hard is it for Norton to hire an I.T. guy that knows what the heck they are doing, instead of passing us customers off to those dips over in Asia who can't even communicate in english to anyone? A message to the folks at Norton: restore your servers from a known good backup and let us customers function, while you troubleshoot your server problems on your time and dollar not ours. We never agreed to be your lousy BETA testers, so stop playing us for fools . . . you ought to be ashamed running a business in this fashion!
Have to agree with most of what you posted. I made similar posts when this outage began on 6th November, and despite the post today claiming they have found the problem and patched it - this is not true. Once again my child tonight could noty do his homework as we could not connect to servers (login) to extend his time. UNBELIEVABLE.
I had my son do this last night and he is finally free to use his PC again: in the solutions sidebar for this forum . the following instructions appear. Even this is a travesty, though as I had to do similar steps to get a virus off my PC once. They have imbedded this program so far into our computers that it's even hard to uninstall it. Anyway, here are the steps that worked for us. Good luck!
1) Shut off internet to your affected machine.
2) Restart computer, before windows logo comes up press hold F8, windows will ask to boot into Safe Mode. I went into Safe Mode without networking.
3) Safe mode windows comes up, goto control panel.
4) Select Programs and Featuires. A lis of programs will come up, select Norton Family.
5) Window Box comes up confirming Uninstall, click yes.....voila...it removes the program.
6) Windows box comes up and says you must reboot. Reboot as normal. Turn internet back on.
Full internet connectivity is back. Good riddance Norton Online Family you just lost a customer
WE ARE STILL WAITING!!!!!!!
Thank you previous poster for letting everyone know how to uninstall Norton Family completely off of their computer. I have isolated the problem to be caused by Norton Family due to its last update solely, that not only screwed up my sons account (the only one being monitored, but the administrator account browser also). I kept restoring the whole computer from a known good Norton Ghost backup done in September, and everything operated good until that stinking Norton Family update that forces you to do the update appeared. Norton is so screwed up, that they have released an update riddled with bugs and failures on all of their customers. Again, I have written a request to the Comcast VP in charge of handling Norton, and begged them to drop Norton completely for this. Norton single handedly screwed up my home computer with my sons account on it, and screwed up my administrator account on the same computer, so that IE8 no longer functioned on the administrator acount, and I couldn't do business for my job on top of that. You talk about idiots at Norton, and Katie who is supposed to FIX and do something about it for all of thousands of miserable Norton suckers on here, hasn't done a darn thing! Hey thanks Katie for your uselessness. Just for the record Norton Family recent update screwed up all three of my XP-Pro computers running Internet explorer on not only th elimited accounts, but the administrator account not even being monitored. They are all Dell Desktops that were running fine before Norton Family's failed and bugged update.
You would think that a company with a month long service outage, that posesses the email address for every one of their clients, might try to contact their customers to let them know there was an issue... Typical Norton...
After waiting approx. one [1] hour over the telephone, I was apprised that this issue has been escalated to the engineers. I have a case number that I can use for status updates. All in all, if this can be fixed in a reasonable amount of time, I will not be seeking a refund. In my opinion, verbally assaulting Symantec Employees and their ethnicity will NOT bring about a quicker resolution.
Symantec is still a great company and light years ahead of the competition. Complexity of technology is ever-increasing; it does not surprise me when things malfunction. Heaven forbid if you were excoriated in this manner for every mistake you’ve ever made. I mean, do we really get this angry when Microsoft misses the mark? Lord knows, they have had their fair share of mistakes.
Like Pink Floyd once explained, “We’re only ordinary men….”
Keep calm and carry on,
H.B.
Update- As of 12/4/2012, I was able to log in to onlinefamily.norton.com with my credentials (accepted) and re-install Norton's Parental Controls on my Windows 7 OS. XP Prof is yet to be evidenced, however, it is interesting to note that it is no longer referenced as "Norton Safety Minder". It is now just simply referred to as, "Norton Family". Internet browsing (for now) seems to be seamless.
Regards,
H.B.
Hi Hammer_Bro,
Thanks for the update. In the latest version, Norton Safety Minder has been renamed to Norton Family.
Thanks,
Katie
WoW! To hear from the lovely Ms. Qiu, Symantec Employee. Totally awesome!!! 
I really don’t deserve this. You see, by you responding to me - - it has gone to my head (so to speak). Maybe you shouldn’t have responded, lol. I just don’t know what to say, this is so unexpected. I don’t know what others may have said about you (and I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to do this) but I love you Katie! I appreciate all the long hours and toil you put in on this forum to make certain that it runs smoothly. I want you to know that your efforts are not in vain. Is there any way I can have your autograph - - or, at the very least, add you to my friend list here?
Bowser’s most adorable minion,
H.B.
Oh, boy. I have a funny feeling that I angered some people with the link to Beat Crusader's video. Overall, I thought it was a funny video - - I definitely did not mean to offend.
Sincere Apologies,
H.B.