Norton Systemworks - yay or nay

[jes]

What is the general feeling on the usefullness of Norton Systemworks?

[Budfred]

I am careful about using any utility suite and install things very selectively. I have found that programs that are designed to prevent crashes or aid recovery usually tend to crash the system more. I try to avoid letting anything run background other than antivirus and firewall. I currently have Systemworks installed, but only the Antivirus and Image are installed. I have been having a lot of trouble with Norton AV lately and support has not been very helpful.

I hope that answers your question.

[mjc]

The whole thing.......no way, some of it is not needed, some is bloated beyond belief and some is useful.

[Rick]

NEVER use it on a previously installed system ( IE: all programs previously installed )

As a New install yes . ( Installed directly after the O/S is installed )
But only Parts of it
Then install the remainder of your programs

It is notorious for finding and removing things it doesn’t know are needed
Like program links and associated files

One Very Good part of the package is WipeInfo
However WipeInfo will no longer Wipe Free space on systems running Windows 2K or XP

[Paul Komski]

Symantec's products (however good or useful) have always embedded/integrated themselves too deeply into the system for my liking.

With good partitioning and back-up procedures (particularly with drive imaging software) many of these "utilities" that are supposed to keep ones system clean and "lean" finish up doing just the opposite and IMO are largely redundant.

[jes]

It has Antivirus, Utilities and Cleansweep. It comes with Ghost and a fax program but I didn't think that I needed them. I have never heard of the WipeInfo. Maybe that program is included in the '03 version. I have '02.
I have never had a problem with any of the programs other than finding that they just needlessly take up space in my hard drive. I think that I will get rid of CleenSweep soon.
The thought that kind of prompted that question in the first place was that my computer was having a problem with loading IE (very slowly) and nothing in the Norton Unilities would fix it. I tried a defrag (the Windows one) and the problem disapeared. Have you found anything like that in the past?

[mjc]

I believe Wipeinfo used to be in the Utilities.

Ghost is one of the good parts, NAV is one of the bloated but works well parts. Cleansweep is one of the problem parts...on some systems it is flawles, on others....well, got an industrial size bottle of Tylenol handy?

[jes]

I have never really understood the usefullness of Ghost. As I understand it, you can save the entire OS configuration on your HD and put it on another drive. Is that right?

[kayofcircles]

jes...Well, let me give you a good example of the usefulness of Ghost. We have a friend who is a very nice man, but an idiot when it comes to computers. My husband built him a new puter, and after loading all the essentials, Ghosted it. Okay, friend screws puter up regularly..usually by installing games that aren't even supposed to work on his puter, and after installing and discovering game won't work, he then proceeds to "change" this or that setting and system crashes entirely. My husband goes over, wipes hard drive, sticks the Ghost floppy, and then CD, into puter..and voila! Back to what was there to start with..and puter working again. Saves my husband hours of work..which, by the way, he doesn't get paid for. Without Ghost, we probably would have had to "terminate" our friend by now.:)

[pentachris]

Ghost is good, and SpeedDisk is good because it keeps the swapfile at a reasonable fixed size and moves it to the front of the file system, which is where the hard drive works the fastest.

But I've figured out a way to do what SpeedDisk does to the swapfile on 9x systems without using SpeedDisk. As long as I can do it on a fresh install.

[jes]

it keeps the swapfile at a reasonable fixed size and moves it to the front of the file system, which is where the hard drive works the fastest.
Isn't that what the Windoze defrag does? Shouldn't the Windoze defrag have fixed my previously mentioned problem with IE?

I have installed Ghost because I want to do what Kay of Circles was talking about but I go into Systemworks and then into Ghost and my only two options are The Norton Ghost Explorer and The Norton Ghost Boot Wizard. I don't have any Ghosted files yet so I choose the Wizard. It gives me choices to make boot disks with different support options. Do I not have the full version of Ghost?

[kayofcircles]

jes...I don't know the answers to your questions, but if you do have Ghost, there's a good tutorial for your first use of it here at Radified (http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_1.htm).

[pentachris]

Windoze defrag will not move your swapfile to the front of the filesystem. Not only that, but Windoze defrag won't even defrag your swapfile. It's a system file, and defrag won't touch files with the system attribute.

[Murphie]

But what are the alternatives to Norton for finding out what's wrong and fixing it?
Murphie

[Budfred]

Well that is sure an open ended question.... There are tons of things out there for solving problems, it just depends on what problem you want to fix....:)

[jes]

Windoze defrag will not move your swapfile to the front of the filesystem. Not only that, but Windoze defrag won't even defrag your swapfile. It's a system file, and defrag won't touch files with the system attribute.
So, according to all of this, the Norton Speeddisk should have fixed me up but it took the Windows defrag to do it. I am asking what the Windows one does that the Norton one doesn't.

[pentachris]

I am asking what the Windows one does that the Norton one doesn't.
To my knowledge, nothing. I don't have a good answer for you there.

[Paul Komski]

A thread (http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=23097&highlight=defragging) where the windows defrag did the trick and when system works failed.

whoops - Now I see that was your thread jes.

[Murphie]

Hello Budfred--Sorry, it's taken me a while to get back to this. I guess what I mean is this--I tend to rely somewhat on some of Nortons utilities, like the One Button Checkup and Windoctor, because I don't know any better. I've heard they don't necessarily do much good and that some, like Disk Doctor, may be harmful or useless, but those of us who are relatively new to this and who don't have a lot of time to spend keeping their computers running (it's not supposed to be a full time job!) tend to fall for Norton because it's there, in your face, so to speak, and claims to be beneficial.

So, are there alternatives to, say, WinDoctor and OneButton Checkup? Or are they just not needed?

Thank you!
Murphie

[Budfred]

I have used a number of utility packages over the years and found each one to have a few useful tidbits and a few things that have made my life more difficult. I tend to look for individual utilities now to solve specific problems. Which utility to use depends on the problem. I do have some diagnostic programs from Ontrack SystemSuite installed and run them occasionally, but I don't let them do automatic changes in most case. Unfortunately I don't think there is a really reliable package that will do it all for you which is why tech support people often recommend reformatting and reinstalling Windoze rather than running a fixit program. I look to PCGuide to help me avoid that as much as possible when I can't figure it out on my own.

If you are having good luck with the utilities you are using, you don't need to change. Just be aware that if you run into trouble that they can't fix, it may be because they are causing it.