I have (had) Norton Family installed on my WinXP desktop, and was getting a repeatable crash or hang in the service. This can be demonstrated by downloading Firefox, and setting about 30 tabs in the home page set. When these pages attempt to be opened all at once, it will frequently (maybe 3 times out of 4) cause a hang or crash in the Norton Family service, resulting in loss of internet connectivity. If the service actually crashes, you can restart it and resume, but otherwise it requires a reboot. This could be either a concurrency problem (I have a Core2Duo processor) or possiby some sort of unusual memory issue related to having so many internet threads in use simultaniously. Please let me know if you're able to reproduce this. If you can't I will provide you with additional details.
You mentioned "...cause a hang or crash in the Norton Family service, resulting in loss of internet connectivity.." Could you tell us what exact you see (a screen shot if possible?) that make you think Norton Family service is the reason causing the loss of internet connectivity?
Also, What version of Firefox are you using? Are you able to see the same thing if using Internet Explorer?
As I recall (last tried it a couple of months ago) the hanging/crashing component is actualy the executable associated with the Norton Online service. Looking over at my daughter's Win7 laptop, which still has it installed, the service name there is different, 'Norton Family', and the exe is ccSvcHst.exe, which I think was the same.
I first noticed this problem with the Mozilla Seamonkey browser, which I use for most of my Internet activity, but replicated it with Firefox as well. I keep all my browsers up to date, and have had this problem for about two years (just found this forum) through all versions. I've never tried configuring that many default tabs in IE, but would expect to see the same behavior. Just so you don't think I'm weird or something, the large number of default tabs is for a bunch of webcomics that I check daily.
As noted previously, when the service actually crashes cleanly rather than hanging (maybe half the time) simply restarting it serves to clear that instance of the problem.
Have you attempted to replicate the issue? I should also note that the account I run under isn't actually monitored by Norton Family, though I do see a copy of the executable running under my ID.
Still waiting for a response as to whether they've been able to successfully replicate the problem... If not, I'm willing to work with them and provide additional debugging information to ensure it can be addressed.
Thanks for your patience. The QA team is able to reproduce the issue partially. We are continuing to work on the issue. As soon as I get any updates, I'll let you know.