K- I've used Norton from the beginning, but it does have some problems. The only thing that takes a while to load in the antivirus component for me... maybe 5- 15 secs. The load time varies. The only other Norton component that I use is Ghost. It loads instantly. All of that internet security stuff is buggy and all the Commander components are redundant and I don't really see why to use them. For purposes of MetaStock, you'll have to disable worm protection or write an exception. You can select which parts of Windows you want installed. Add/remove programs --> add/remove windows components. This is not everything, but it'll get you started. I'd have to dig deeper to find out more. I'm using a full version of Pro on one computer and the full version of Home on another. I've never tried to upgrade Home to Pro... didn't even know that it could be done.

Konrad, Does this software have a firewall in it ?If it does; that might be doing it. I had a similar problem; not with norton but a different software that had a firewall included with it and I had to get rid of it and get a hardware firewall.Hope this helps some.