Norton Utilities 2001

Norton Utilities 2001 is a suite of software to optimize PC performance. Installing and customizing the product is easy. There are four installation options: ‘Compact’ to install only the essential programs, ‘Custom’ to choose the components you want to install, ‘Express’ to install utilities with minimal user interaction, and the ‘Standard’ option for installing the standard set of Utilities.

The software is divided into four categories based on functionality. It has utilities to optimize performance, find and fix problems, maintain your system, and track and edit registry settings. It also comes with some DOS-based utilities, including disk editor, Norton disk doctor, unerase, and

unformat.

Optimize performance

Norton Utilities has a wizard to process the system registry and swap file to optimize performance. It sets an efficient minimum size for the swap file to minimize its fragmentation, and also moves it to your fastest drive if your PC has multiple drives. Norton Speed Disk helps to defragment your hard drives. This has more legends than the default Windows defrag tool. Another useful tool in this section is Wipeinfo, which can be used to wipe all free space left in a drive. When you delete files from your system, only their entry in the file allocation table gets deleted. The data remains there and can be recovered using recovery tools. Wipinfo cleans out this data beyond recovery. 

Find and fix problems

This includes Norton System Doctor to monitor your PC. A number of sensors monitor memory, disks, system, the Internet connection, performance, and other information. You can pick from about 35 sensors to display, and also set threshold limits. These send alerts the moment limits are exceeded. 

Norton System Check analyzes the system status. It checks for disk and Windows problems, reports errors, and suggests solutions. Norton Disk Doctor takes care of hard disk problems. It checks the partition table, boot record, file and directory structure and also does a surface test to check for errors or bad sectors. An Unerase wizard lets you recover deleted files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin. Norton WinDoctor finds and corrects Windows- related problems like program and registry integrity scans, or changes made to directories and shortcuts. 

Registry utilities

This includes Norton Registry Tracker and Editor that monitor changes to critical setup data and startup files, and let you edit the Windows registry and startup files. It’s more comprehensive than the regular Windows

Regedit. 

System maintenance

These utilities gather crucial system information and let you create rescue and image disks for use in case of a system crash. 

Overall, considering the number of utilities packed in and the functionality they provide, this product’s a good buy for its price.

Ankur Saxena at PCQ Labs