thank you, norton

bought a gateway nv78 laptop over the weekend. price is amazing for all the features and after seeing all these windows 7 ads i was ready to give windows another chance. real slick laptop with hdmi output even nice touch.

plugged it in and booted up real fast, then the frustrations started. i actually compiled a list of problems that seemed to grow bigger with every reboot

• couln't enter control panel networking and sharing center, i would just see the rotating blue thing forever
• couldn't restart it would freeze on shutdown screen
  
• couldn't get wpa2 key to take for wifi
• adobe flashplayer crashed/froze chrome, ie and firefox
• uninstaller didn't work
• windows start menu items having to do with control panel threw RPC errors (real classy to see on a brand new laptop)
• NI maschine, the real reason i bought this windows laptop crashed
• i would select either windows or norton's firewall in the 'action center' but the choice wouldn't stick

what i didn't realize was all these problems apparently had one thing in common: norton internet security. of course i couldn't uninstall it normally, the computer had to be started up in safe mode so i could actually uninstall it. did i mention it came bundled? unexcusable IMO i was cursing microsoft all weekend then realized it wasn't its fault. sorry microsoft!