In regards to Symantec: I tried to uninstall, failed. Uninstalled successfully after a reboot, reinstalled, then tried to uninstall again and failed.

I'm really pretty sure at this point that the Symantec firewall installation got badly hosed. Unless someone can suggest something else, I'm probably going to have to reinstall. That three laptop Windows reinstallations in a week.

Whee. :/
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Bitt Faulk