I *considered* purchasing Norton 360 for my older “door stop” PC desktop & ancient laptop, since the price mysteriously dropped to 50% or less. Having been a software tester for decades, it is my tendency to question why a piece of software is selling so cheaply. Although it angers the optimists around me, I look for worst-case scenarios. I read reviews for the product on Amazon. The majority of people appear to have new machines, fast processors, gobs of RAM and more than adequate space on their Hard Drive(s), so they are thrilled at what a good deal they’ve gotten.

THEN there are the single-star reviews from people who have some very creative ideas about what happened to their machine post-installation. I began researching and found this site. Great stuff..sorry you had to go through this experience but you have done a tremendous service to people who imagine that large software companies like Norton have integrity. You are correct in your observation that matters to these companies is Their Bottom Line. They do not care about the naive consumer, let alone the experienced ones. If a person hasn’t got the latest and greatest equipment, that’s their tough luck. Sadly, those who can’t pony up a thousand or more for “state-of-the-art” equipment are often the people who are buying this product because it looks like such a good deal.

A person can’t afford to throw away 80 bucks, but they can afford to spend 40 bucks — and in too many cases they’d be better off tossing their money into the fire. They don’t bother to uninstall the previous version of Norton because there really shouldn’t be a NEED to manually uninstall a previous version of a product. In most cases, they believe they can UPGRADE. What rational reason can be given to explain that an attempt to upgrade is akin to playing Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun? Whatever happened to Class Action Lawsuits?

Regrettably, I worked for Microsoft for several years and can confirm everything you assert about large software companies. As a Tester. I sat in many meetings and argued that Developers needed to fix a problem I could hit in half a dozen ways. Here are some of the common responses, as I recall: “We don’t care.” “You’re the ONLY one who has reported this problem. Customers are unlikely to ever encounter it. We’re going to PUNT this one.” “We’ve already blown one ship date. We can’t screw up another. It’s going to ship with this problem. We’ll release a fix for it in an update.” I was PRESSURED to sign off on products I knew to have problems that would wreak havoc when encountered. I remember using the word “altruism” in a meeting and having a dozen people laugh in my face. I resigned from Microsoft while I still had some sense of integrity and morality. I walked away from a large paycheck, many stock options and incredible benefits while I still had some crumbs of sanity left.

Since that time, things have gone steadily downhill. The structure of testing has deteriorated while the people who run the show assert that testing has *improved*. If the guy at the top says it’s better, it MUST be true. heh. The first time I saw and attempted to work with VISTA, I was horrified. I didn’t purchase or install VISTA on any of my machines. By this time I was working a minimum wage gig, tutoring teenagers and young adults with disabilities. Make money or remember what it means to have self-respect and take pride in one’s work. Imagine a teenager who has a form of autism shopping for a laptop. They TRUST the advertising. I attempt to explain that software is designed and tested by human beings and companies are not always telling the truth. Just because a company is huge and successful does not mean you can believe what you see on TV, read in magazine ads or are told by salespeople in stores. They encounter problem after problem in VISTA, including the infamous BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death, for the uninitiated).

This can be a devastating lesson that causes people who demonstrated great promise to abandon computing entirely. People with autism often do not have high frustration tolerance. For some, computer proficiency meant they had a chance of a career, of acquiring technical and social skills that would have allowed them to live independently. When software doesn’t work, when the machine crashes, they do not blame the software or manufacturer: they blame themselves.

This is not sour grapes nor cynicism you’re reading in this comment: this is reality. In small software companies, when I said software wasn’t going to ship until certain problems were corrected and tested, software didn’t ship. I faced off with Developers who were tired of coding — I was tired of testing, but there was no way I’d let the product ship until problems were fixed and I’d tested on every configuration we claimed to support. The owners and management supported me, because they knew one bad release could cost them their business. I never reported a bug that could not be reproduced. And if something was minor and difficult to encounter, it went into the Read Me First document. Nothing that caused a crash and/or data loss went out to the public. Huge software companies that rake in billions of dollars cannot continue to coast on what was once a strong reputation and release bad products to consumers without suffering the consequences.

In a weak economy with free and cheap alternatives that are better, where certain source code is openly available and custom solutions can be created, even customers who have become accustomed to using products from big name companies are going to find the courage to venture into the unknown. Even the most naive person can tell the difference between bad and good, between what works and what doesn’t and learn from experience.

Testing was and should remain the Final Word and it is not the job of the consumer to find and report problems to a company that in all likelihood already knows the problem exists. The monolithic companies are losing ground to smaller players and Linux distros. Unfortunately, there will always be the consumer who trusts the big names to do the right thing, when the opposite is true. To these consumers, I say this: you can become accustomed to mediocrity as many people have and will continue to do. However, until you quit settling for whatever garbage these companies glamorize and put into a pretty new box and begin to complain and/or quietly boycott by refusing to spend another dollar on new versions or “upgrades”, these companies will continue to believe that their consumer base is nothing more than a vast herd of sheep waiting to be fleeced.

The good news is that this blog posting helped bail you out.

The bad news is that this blog posting help bail you out.

This blog entry was made back in Dec 2007. Here we are in 2010 and this post still ranks at the top of the search engines for Norton 360 Problems.

SAD SAD SAD. I had thought that my steps to get out of Norton Hell would have become obsolete by now. I guess I am as good at judging time-lines as Symantec is at making software.

TMA

So last week Dad calls and says he’s got N360 and when can I come put it in. Once I got there I Googled “installing Norton 360″ and found your article, read it to him, and we went out and got Kaspersky which of course installed lickety-split. I NEVER have to deal with Norton again. THANK YOU!!!

I have a new PC and needed some installation help so i went over to http://www.InstallSoftware.com but they did not provide me with the in depth
info this guy did. he kicks all the bigger sites’ butts.

Thanks Again

YOU MUST UPGRADE to Norton 360 Version 3. This is very easy to do by letting Norton do the upgrade. Get onto the Norton site via Help and Support and start a live chat session with Norton support. Give Norton control of your PC through a live connect session. They will download for “FREE” the new Version 3 of Norton 360. They will also uninstall your Version 2 (FIRST) before installing the new Version 3. Problem solved and IE8 works great with Version 3

Glad to know that you got it working. I know how much of a pain it can be!

The Mad Ape
http://www.tatumba.com

As I said before go to http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en and download the executable then install it as per manufacturers instructions which I would assume is double clicking the executable you download.

The Mad Ape
http://www.tatumba.com

Remember to create a restore point first

If this does not work try the Norton Support or send them an email bitch loudly and see if they will refund you. They did for me.

I am in the process of doing a follow up to this by recommending a better product. Please stay tuned.

The Mad Ape
http://www.tatumba.com

This is a new one to me. May I suggest that you give it what it is looking for. Try downloading and installing the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&displaylang=en

It is a rather small file. Once installed then retry N360 again. I have 2.0 running on 3 computers and all work fine.

You may wish to create a restore point prior to doing anything so you can recover from a disaster.

Good luck and let me know how you make out.

The Mad Ape
http://www.tatumba.com

… with a little difference… it had grown enough to screw up the os just in one and half days and leaving no other option other than to reinstall os …

… really doubt, which world are we living in …