A reader writes:

I have been using NAV for about 3 years now after having problems with Mcafee. I had two copies of 2002 running on two machines. About five months ago, I decided to upgrade this year to 2004 instead of renewing. I will spare you all of the details about the first install, as the problems I had are now well documented. The copy of NAV 2004 I had purchased came with two licenses. I had not installed the second license at the time I had installed the first because I was waiting for one of the 2002 licenses to lapse. Yesterday was the day.

Let me just interject here that, with Norton, it is indeed a good idea to let your previous subscription run out to the end. Customers who renew or upgrade early almost inevitably that they lose the remaining months of their previous subscription. The reader continues:

The install was no problem, but when I went to activate, I got the message that my license was not in their database. After rechecking my work a few times, I decided to go the manual route and authenticate by phone. I got the new code without a problem and installed it. Afterwards, NAV would not run. Even if I uninstalled and re-installed it, it would not run. It's almost like it thinks I have tried to crack it or something and now it's disabled. Of course, Symantec is not open on the weekends, so I was without virus protection until Monday

Monday I spent a total of about 1.5 hours on the phone with Symantec. After talking with the first level and getting a ticket number I was finally able to talk with someone in the support group. I asked if I could just have them renew my 2002 for another year and forget trying to run the 2004. This was a no go. I was told that after the 60 days were up, there was no refund of any kind. I was also told that they, tech support, did not understand how "customer support" was able to license the product twice with a single product key. One last thing they told me was that it was very possible that the license key was removed from their server as they normally do this a few months after the product has been registered.

I must have 4-5 hours into this project now. That first install was no dream either. So I am giving up. I just don't have this kind of time and consider the money spent was for a lesson well learned. To me, this has been one of the worst programs I have bought in a long time. Had I known how bad it was I would not have purchased it. Next year I won't make this mistake.