As a former IT support guy, I can't explain how much revenue Norton would generate from me. They would regularly push updates that wiped all the critical software from customer's systems. The software was often obscure products from small vendors. Even in a small office, it was an easy day's work for me that I would not have had otherwise.
After multiple episodes of this, it dawned on me that I shouldn't be able to reinstall the software if Norton truly was removing it. The issue was that Norton's products did indeed remove it as part of an antivirus "update", but they quickly released another "update" that got rid of the problem. I turned off something labeled "pulse" updates and set it to daily instead. Not only did I never see this problem again, the PC's generally had better performance.
After multiple episodes of this, it dawned on me that I shouldn't be able to reinstall the software if Norton truly was removing it. The issue was that Norton's products did indeed remove it as part of an antivirus "update", but they quickly released another "update" that got rid of the problem. I turned off something labeled "pulse" updates and set it to daily instead. Not only did I never see this problem again, the PC's generally had better performance.