My Norton Utilities 16 went south about 6 weeks ago. In that 6 weeks I have spent (guessing) over 50 hours in chat sessions.
First the good news - case number 31510468 can be closed. This was about the sixth case number for this problem. Yesterday I was finally transferred to a Level 2 Technician. That tech didn't solve the problem, but he told me to try a defrag on reboot. I doubted that it would help, since I have defragged many many times over these 6 weeks. But HEY! After an all night defrag, NU16 came up and ran correctly for the first time in 6 weeks. So I'm guessing not all defrags are equal. Who knew!
There are a large number of comments I could make about the customer service I received during this 6 weeks. Mostly negative. Norton/Symantec, you have a lousy customer service process. Please fix it. You know what the problems are - and if you don't, give me a call.
One 'problem' with the customer service process - each contact generates a new case number. And it's not at all clear that they are connected when the same problem is being addressed. And there is no way to tell you that the case can be closed - oh, but you'll assume that anyway (which is just wrong).
Enough said. Close the case. Thanks for the help.