Talk:Norton Utilities

NPOV
I'm afraid I don't know much about this subject, but many of the assertions in this article come across as not NPOV:

''Creating new utilities that are standard features of a system is usually viewed as counter-productive. Marketing them as new features and as new utilities is at least less than honest.''

In particular, the second section is particularly vitriolic, and I'm sure there must be another side to the story:

''The featured utility in 'The Norton Utilities, Release 2' was 'filefind' which allowed users to locate files on the new hard drives. At the time of the release Mr. Norton was Utilities Editor for PC Magazine, and in the marketing and all communications for 'Release 2' he failed to mention that 'findfile' from On-DIsk Software, Weston, Massachusetts, had been submitted for review almost a year before and performed all the functions of 'filefind' as well as some more. This utility was taken without "consent, contract or compensation" and incorrectly presented as Norton's work. Upon being alerted of an apparent lapse of journalistic efforts, not to mention apparent I.P. borrowings, if not theft, Norton suddenly was no longer Utilities Editor for PC Magazine.'' --Huppybanny 14:12, August 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. There was certainly an amount of borrowing of features between NU and, for example, PC Tools over the years. Would On-Disk have supplied the source code, or is this another case of feature cloning? Lovingboth 12:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Fan Decheng Will Add Something
Looking at the article, it was so faint. Let me add something about Norton Utilities 8 for MS-DOS and/or Norton Utilities 4 for Windows 9x. - Fan Decheng (AKA Robbie Mosaic)

And now we have a nice combination of NPOV and non-native English. Sigh. ZacharyS 00:42, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Hmm. Hopefully my edit removes most of the problems with this page. I know I've left a few gaps, so more details would be welcomed (but only if they exclude non-sequiters such as "Compared with Microsoft programs, programs in Norton Utilities are much more beautiful and seeming to be smarter"). It does sound like someone has a personal grudge against the Norton Utilities. I'd also prefer it if the allegations of copying FINDFAST/FASTFIND were not reinstated unless somone could provide some proof. mh. 23:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I have reverted the edit by 70.57.70.149 to that of Mhoulden, which seemed to be reasonably balanced. The stuff added by 70.57.70.149 seems to be the same as the original NPOV stuff which had been cleared up so well. Please do not revert back unless you clear up the obvious bias against Norton. Incidentally, mh, I think you have done a marvellous job. --Huppybanny 22:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry that I am unable to speak native English, because I am not a native English speaker. Thanks for everybody's good work on the Norton Utilities page. I want to say that I do not have a personal grudge on NU. Instead, I liked Symantec Norton series products. Although Chinese translation of Symantec products aren't ideal, but they are much better and carefully done than Microsoft Chinese translations. A question: In the article: However, with the advent of Windows XP onwards, Norton's 'Speed Disk' reverted back to single-cluster defragmentation. The question is, was it really true? -- Fan Decheng 1:46, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Having worked on Speed Disk for windows NT I can tell you that it is not true that only one cluster is moved at a time the slowdown is the server targeted optimization algorithm and the Microsoft MoveFile API that is used to move the clusters. The Speed Disk for XP is a derivitive of the Speed Disk that was released for Windows NT4 and Windows 2000. In Windows NT4 there were no internal API's for moving around the disk contents. A driver was written to accomplish this task. The same driver was used on Windows 2000, but in windows 2000 Microsoft introduced a new API called the "MoveFile" API. MoveFile allowed a program to move around clusters on the disk but had serious limitations. Because of the limitations initially Speed Disk continued using their driver which was faster and could optimize the MFT and directories. After a few patches to Windows 2000 and a lack of focus on the utilities market, security was becoming the companies new focus, there was a decision to remove the driver which needed a new update everytime a patch came out and just use the MoveFile API which was supported by MS. The current MoveFile API has few limitations, but is still a lot slower than the driver was and the optimization algorithm in XP is much less efficient than the old 9x algorithm since the XP algorithm was originally targeted at maintenance of servers, not quick defrags. visionep 23:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

NU history
It's ancient history I know, but I have a memory that Norton Disk Doctor was introduced in the unmentioned 4.5 release. I'll see if I can find the readme file from then. Lovingboth 12:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Just curious, but what was in version 3.0 of NU? StormCloud 12:12, 6 September 2007 (UTC)


 * I know that Speed Disk existed in 3.5. (The article suggests that it was introduced with 4.0.) And i'm pretty sure that NDD was there as well (with a much simpler UI than later). —überRegenbogen (talk) 07:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Differences between NU 2000 and newer
I was hoping the article might mention how the product has evolved over these released. Anyone know where this information may be obtained from please? --Rebroad 01:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

UNERASE.EXE inside Windows Me GUI session
Norton SystemWorks 2000 is the last ever version that contains UNERASE.EXE that permits checking directories for presence of deleted files inside Windows Me GUI session by using unerase /noprotected /list command. UNERASE.EXE from all newer editions crashes in this case instead of displaying list of deleted files. Example from running UNERASE.EXE on single 115 GiB FAT32 partition:

C:\MY DOCUMENTS\U2000>unerase.exe /noprotected /list UnErase, Norton Utilities 2000 ..10E, Copyright 1991-1999 by Symantec Corp.

Erased files matching C:\MYDOCU~1\U2000\*.*:

?rased.ers 0 bytes 09:13 2007 Dec 6 poor

C:\MY DOCUMENTS\U2001>unerase.exe /noprotected /list UnErase, Norton Utilities 2001 ..10E, Copyright 1991-2000 by Symantec Corp.

Error [35]: Page fault 00000000 in C:\MYDOCU~1\U2001\UNERASE.EXE at 00F7:0BAC code 0006 SS=1187 DS=008F ES=00D7 load base=015F AX=B40F BX=1180 CX=0E6B DX=0867 SP=AC1C BP=AC24 SI=0000 DI=0094

Wikinger (talk) 17:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Application Names
The article has the peculiar tendency toward identifying the applications in the suite by their file names rather than their full names. (e.g. SPEEDISK vs Speed Disk.) This is just ugly. —überRegenbogen (talk) 07:23, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Nu 1.0 for Win95 was quite buggy.
Norton Utilities 1.0 for Windows 95 had some nasty bugs. Disk Dr. would erroneously claim partition tables had "errors" and while "fixing" them would damage the partition table. Fortunately the DOS version of Disk Dr. was sometimes able to recover the partition table and fix it so that the Windows version would stop complaining about nonexistent "errors". I had it do that to me circa 1997 on a Win95a system. It lost my extended FAT16 partition and it took multiple attempts with the DOS Disk Dr. on a boot floppy to get it back. I quickly upgraded to NU 2.0 for Win95! It added and fixed more than FAT32 support. Back then it was easy to find information on the NU 1.0 bugs. Bizzybody (talk) 09:04, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

HIstorically misleading
This was an important, powerful, significant product on DOS. Reviews of recent editions, while interesting in their own right, are given undue prominence (because the product is now unimportant), and give a misleading bias to the article, because they aren't put in context of reviews of other editions, the exhaustive listing of which forms the bulk of the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 08:15, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Norton Calibrate ?
Steve Gibson of Gibson Research Corporation claims "Norton's "calibrate" ... they reverse engineered the code and stole the technology." [ https://www.grc.com/x/news.exe?cmd=article&group=grc.spinrite.dev&item=40998&utag= ] that Norton reverse-engineered Spinrite [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinRite ] and released their own version as Norton Calibrate, I see an abandoned US Trademark application in 1990 for Norton Calibrate [ https://alter.com/trademarks/calibrate-74072206 ], presumably around the time Symantec took over, a service failure comment at [ https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x/issues/2477 ], but no commercial listing of the product, any clues? --68.100.25.179 (talk) 01:42, 16 December 2022 (UTC)