I am at an absolute dead end with Norton 360. My wife bought the program and installed it before I knew about it. Now I can't run it or uninstall it. Here is what has gone on so far:

I subscribe to RealGames. I bought a game and got ready to download it. I found that Internet Explorer (which RealGames must have to work) has been cut off from the Internet, undoubtedly by Norton 360. My Firefox browser works fine, so I know it isn't my internet connection. It was suggested to change the firewall settings. No problem, I thought. I double clicked on the Norton 360 icon to load the control panel. Nothing loads.

I go to the Norton (Symantec) website. There is no answer for my problem in the tech support database. I check out telephone support. The only thing available is a pay service, for which one call costs more than we paid for the software. I try their online chat support. It requires Internet Explorer, which their program has cut off from the internet. I go to another computer which does not have 360 installed yet. I load Internet Explorer, go back to the website and go into online chat. The software never loads.

I call their corporate office. The automated phone system refers me back to the website, which has gotten me nowhere.

I try uninstalling 360. The uninstall program goes all the way to the end (about 30 minutes), then locks up without competing the uninstall. This has happened four times.

Apart from burying this computer in a landfill, how do I proceed?

First, when she installed the 360 was the old security software removed before hand? if you got two of anything security, anti-virus, firewalls, etc., you'll have issues.

Second, Norton has an uninstall tool that you can use because their security software has the tendency to leave remnants behind.

Third, others will have different work arounds, but I have found CCleaner's uninstalling Tool (its within the CCleaner utility; free and its great) to work better.

If the Windows Add/Remove Programs doesn't list the Norton software so that you can remove it from there, you can get the Windows Installer Cleanup Utility from the download section @ microsoft.com (you'll have to search for it). Install it, run it and pick the Norton software and tell it to remove the installer information for Norton.