It doesn't happen much, but when it happens, it's a real pain:
The thirty minute (or more) lock-up.
I have a client who is a travel agent. Time is precious to her; time is money to her. Having a locked up computer is disaster.
Yes, it is Norton.
According to my Event Viewer, the lock-up began about the same time as an auto Live Update. And it ended 30 minutes later just as the Live Update finished.
What's not clear is whether the Live Update initiated the problem or whether the problem with the Live Update was because of some other Norton activity that took over working memory.
One way or another, it was a Norton issue. Had I been impatient, I could have killed the Norton processes; but a) I didn't want to be without security; and b) I wanted to find out how long it would take to diminish its activity.
What I can report is that nothing I did influenced the memory demand, which fluctuated from 97% to 100% regardless of what other activities I was engaged in. Shutting down IE 7 took almost 10 minutes but did nothing to alleviate the memory demand of the Norton software. What I want to make clear is that the computer was not idle except insofar as its unusability made it idle for all practical purposes. Nonetheless, I was making my own need to use resources obvious my trying to browse, trying to launch another app, etc -- none of which was responded to by Norton in any sort of release of memory.
I am sure that this is just one instance of a regular pattern of memory lock up by Norton -- a pattern often mentioned on these boards. Has anyone from Symantec yet responded to this issue?