No. Norton is widely recognized as being one of the most reliable and frequently updated antiviruses available. There isn't a free one that can truly compare in terms of security and reliability. For $25 it's the best protection you can get. Read a magazine.
As far as Norton not running properly check these things:
-Make sure you've got 256mb of ram or more, Norton uses a decent amount of memory
-Be certain there are no other antivirus programs running as Norton doesn't play well with them
-You should definitely check out Symantec's Knowledge Base. It's pretty good as far as online knowledge bases go and it's answered a few questions for me. Maybe send their tech support an email too, they can be pretty good sometimes.