Right....tried that, was the very first troubleshooting tip. Turned off (the uninstalled) Norton and then turned off the firewall altogether and lowered internet security and so on and so forth.
Alright here is what I know
I did whole system refresh, tried with everything in the original default settings. The problem persisted, tried every troubleshooting tip offered by Java. Called MS tech support (who told me to call Java tech support and pay like 50¢ a minute or whatever)...
Sorry, nothing is working but I have found a way to fix the problem. Go out, trade in my windows 8 computer as it is still in warranty and get a windows 7 machine because at this point I am just fed up
Latest Java updates (64bits and 32bits) work for a while then stop with no warning. Be it HTML chat rooms -not loading- or embedded videos or whatever else. That is on ALL browsers not just IE. Opera, Chrome, Firefox....they all stop working.
(on a strange note, trying to play an embedded...