Internet Security 2008 (A necessary file could not be loaded (1002,1) after installing a Norton 2008 program) (download symfix)

Since this is a fix/workaround I will cut right to the chase. I had the following symptoms:

• I have multiple accounts on my computer (mine, wife, kids)
• I installed NIS from my account and it worked fine
• NIS did not work in the other accounts (Virus protection was off)
• I recieved "A necessary file could not be loaded (1002,1) after installing a Norton 2008 program" when running in the other accounts
• I am running XP, but I suspect the same problem would happen in 2K and Vista (since it si a directory rights issue).
• Norton's automatic help unhelpfully suggested either
• Download symfix (did not help)
• Unintalling and reinstall (which did work for my wife's account but it was too time consuming)
  

My problem was an Norton Internet Security 2008 feature to "protect the files from hackers", it also seems to "protect" them from multiple accounts. You can find this feature under Norton Internet Security Tab, Internet Security Options, How to protect your product from hackers. If you turn this off you should be able to use NIS on all your accounts (it worked for me). This is a lot nicer than uninstalling and reinstalling NIS in each account.

If you want to root cause this yourself use windows explorer from one of the accounts NIS is not working in. See if you can see the C:\Program Files\Norton Internet Security directory. If Norton is installed somewhere else you can look at the properties on the menu item or shortcut to find out where. In any case if you can't see this directory from the account you want to run NIS in the solution above should help.

I suspect I may be able to give all my users read access to the directory and then turn the feature back on, more on that later.

As a conclusion I really like NIS 2008. The performance seems fine, and I like the new interface. It does not seem to have integrated with my SystemWorks, but that is ok. I think 2007 did. This plus SystemWorks and I have my computer nicely cleaned up and ready for the new year.