For those who are just joining this thread, I don’t know how long Bruce’s
fix will keep. We’ll just have to wait until the next Patch Tuesday. I’m
glad he reminded me that most software companies advise to uninstall your AV
before downloading programs. It didn’t occur to me that this would be
necessary with Windows Update, but now it all makes a lot of sense. Haven’t
got a clue as to why it took so long for the problem to occur??? I’ve been
running Norton since Windows Update began.

The notion that the software giant does not back down to third party
problems is not necessarily true. Just last year, MS security patches caused
major conflicts with HP users, and MS not only provided a workaround but also
posted a security response. The work around was not user friendly involving
editing registry files. According to the WP article I posted earlier, users
had to resort to doing a System Restore. Does this sound familiar? MS also
released fixes for Realtek in response to problems with SP2. So, I’m not
going to say that Norton is “all” to blame here given the history of problems
with MS security patches. How nice for MS if we all got rid of Norton, and
I’m sure that there will be plenty of you out there that will. After all,
many IT professionals have chosen Linux over Windows for the same reason.

It appears that Norton has stepped up to the problem by offering a free
upgrade to NIS 2007 for users who own NIS 2006. It has been reported that
this version is not having any compatibility issues with IE, OE, or security
patches. I’ve contacted them to see if they are going to offer the same
upgrade to NIS 2005 owners that have a current LiveUpdate subscription.

Whatever you do folks, know that your reasoning behind choosing Norton was
probably the same for choosing IE as you web browser. My subscription to
Norton doesn’t expire until 2/08, so I’ll be keeping it until then and have
to work around any problems that might pop up with the next security patch.
Oh boy, I can’t wait!

Best luck to all that are experiencing this frustrating problem!!