Hi Legtwister,
Please do not confuse the Norton Remove and Reinstall Tool , with the Norton Removal Tool. They are two different tools with different functions.
The NRnRT will uninstall your current Norton product and then automatically reinstall the most current version of that product and retain your settings.
The Norton Removal Tool does a much more thorough job of cleaning up any digital debris and provides for a cleaner manual reinstall. The removal and the reinstall are both manually completed. In the case of the NRT, your settings are not retained. The NRT is also run as a cleanup when you do not desire to reinstall Norton, but are switching to another product.
All that said, the NRnRT is the first suggested route to try for a reinstall, wile the NRT would be a follow-up if the NRnRT did not fix the problem.
If you understand the difference between the two tools and do in fact need to use the NRT, I would suggest the following:
Let's say you are having a problem with your current install not working correctly and you decide a clean install of Norton might fix the problem. You can always go to the download for your product, save it to your system (I'd use a USB Drive), then download and save the NRT prior to removing your Norton Product (while you are still protected). You can then remove your Norton Product via the Control Panel, run the NRT you saved and then run your Norton Product that you also saved.
Hope that clears things up for you.