I've been a longtime user of Symantec's Norton Internet Security (NIS) products, installing it on all of my computers with purchases annual licenses and doing regular updates and maintenances. Previous to the 2007 edition, many complained about speed problems and suggested I try other software - which I did and disliked for various reasons - but I was very happy with all of the NIS versions; probably because I installed it on systems that could handle it and tweaked it to match my personal requirements.
NIS 2007 and 2008 required free add-on packages to include such crucial functions as spam and ad blocking. Given the all-in-one product range of Norton 360 (360), I decided to switch over to 360. I currently maintain 3 main computers so 360 (version 2) came in handy with its 3 seats license. On both Microsoft Windows Vista Business computers (one workstation and one tablet notebook) it runs smoothly and unnoticeable in the background. On the third computer however, also a tablet notebook but running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, 360 ran into troubles with all non-admin (restricted) user accounts.
By default, one would remove (if any) old Norton security programs to be replaced by 360 version 2 and installing the new program using the administrator user account because of its permission settings. In my case, removing the old NIS2008 went smoothly; I restarted, logged in as admin again and installed 360. It all went well, I rebooted, ran LiveUpdate to apply a lot of updates (took a long time) and rebooted again. All good.. I thought until I logged in with a different account having "only" power-user permissions.
Symantec states that Norton 360 2.0 is not supported on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition but that seems rather strange. I gave it a try anyways and the only thing not working is its Intrusion Prevention. A 3 hours chat session with Symantec's support service, including remote-control access to the affected computer, did not bring much new insight other than installing the program from within a non-admin user account. This is possible with the "switch to admin user for installation from within a non-admin account" function.
So after removing the botched 360 installation and installing again from within the restricted account, followed by a restart, it seemed to work. Then I did the big LiveUpdate and restarted again, after which the Intrusion Prevention failed again. By then, the support chat was over given that the problem seemed to have been solved (prior to the LiveUpdate). Rather out of frustration, I ran LiveUpdate once more and indeed id did apply a small update which however didn't require any reboot. I did so anyways and - almost like a miracle - 360 was back to normal.
Now I am scared to try running LiveUpdate from the admin account or even logging in as admin.
Update June 02, 2008 - 2pm
As feared, the above "solution" only worked for as long as I did not re-login as administrator. Now the questions would be:
- Waste another day on this?
- Never login as admin again? (impossible)
Or, re-install each time 360 in restricted user account after logging in as admin? - Give restricted user admin rights?
