When I started researching problems with NIS 2005, I realized how much of an idiot my father was to pay 50 bucks for this product. 90 Days ago we bought a Gateway. It came with the free 90 day trial of NIS. As far as I could tell this product was doing its job fine. The problem came when we bought a year of NIS. We bought this 5 software package from gateway support and so we got NIS on a cd with a product key. I was hoping that the product key could be used on the current installation of NIS but there is appearently no way to do that. So I load the NIS disk to see what happens. It asks me to uninstall the NIS I already had on the computer. So I did. Then I proceeded to install NIS from this cd. Everything seemingly was going right, but I noticed that it never asked for the product key. But I followed through the installation with a restart. Windows loaded fine. I decieded to run live update and check the settings of NIS. I assumed that at some point it would ask for my product key. I tried 2 ways to open NIS. Using the icon on the desktop and the icon on the system tray. The computer processing light flickers a little bit but Norton doesn't load. I've checked my computer for spyware. And I attempted to use online FREE support. No way anybody would pay 30 bucks for phone support. Might as well buy mcaffe(sp). The free support had a way to activate Liveupdate from thier website. I thought couldn't hurt. Well It didn't help either. I've tried just loading the antivirus instead of the security center and it won't load either.

***edit: Yes I have tried to reinstall NIS several times.

[B]Hello and welcome to Techspot.[/B]

IMHO, I `d recommend that you completely uninstall Norton, and use something else. Take a look at this Norton thread [URL=http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic16895.html]HERE[/URL]

You can get the free AVG which is very very good from [URL=http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1]HERE[/URL]

You can also get the free Sygate firewall from [URL=http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm]HERE[/URL]

Both the above products are a lot less problematic than Norton.

Regards Howard

even Norton has problems uninstalling itself!

see the Norton Support Site and read carefully

Shame 50 bucks down the drain. *uninstalls* Which is reccomended. Windows firewall or Sygate firewall? I've heard of AVG before. Is it the best free anti-virus?

Avg free is a great free antivirus programme. I`ve been using it for a long time, and have had no problems, or viruses either.

The reason I recommended the Sygate firewall is because it is very good.

I personally use the free Zonealarm firewall, I`ve used it ever since I`ve been on the net, but some people have reported compatibility issues with it.

You can get Zonealarm free from [URL=http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/catalog/products/sku_list_za.jsp?dc=12bms&ctry=US&lang=en&lid=dbtopnav_zass]HERE[/URL]

Regards Howard

BIN NORTON. uninstal it, then run a search for norton and a separate one for symantec then delete them all. it an absolute P.O.S