Product: Norton SytemWorks 2001
Company: Symantec
Website: http://www.symantec.com
Estimated Street Price: $59.95
Review By: Julien JAY

Introduction

Symantec the worldwide leader of ‘yellow branded’ utility software has just released a new version of its famous maintenance suite named SystemWorks 2001. This new version contains Norton AntiVirus 2001, Norton CleanSweep 2001, and Norton Utilities 2001. With this new release is the full support of Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows Me: a good point to be able to use Norton tools on almost every Windows 32bit platform. Every version of the Norton has evolved, but does this new release bring enough new features to justify the upgrade cost? We’ll review that in detail.

Features List

• Norton AntiVirus protects your PC against viruses

• Norton Utilities optimizes system performance

• Norton CleanSweep removes Internet clutter

• Convenient links to Symantec Web Partners and Norton Web Services

Setup

Once you have inserted the Norton SystemWorks 2001 CD in your PC, the autoplay box will appear and you’ll have to push the install button to start the setup program. It’s simple so everybody will be able to install it. Obviously you can customize the setup and choose which Norton applications you want to install. The more customizable application is Norton Utilities since you can choose which tools of Norton Utilities you want to install (for example many power users don’t want to install the Norton Protected bin so they can disable it). Once you’ve built your own setup preferences and defined your virus protection settings the install program will start and you’ll have the time to take a cup of coffee since it’s very long even with a 40x CD drive. Once the suite of tools is installed you have to register them over the Internet to activate your free LiveUpdate services for Norton AntiVirus. Now you can reboot your computer and you’re just a mouse click away to discover this new release of Norton SystemWorks 2001.
     

Setup screen where you can choose which Norton Utilities components can be installed

Bootable CD

The CD-Rom of Norton SystemWorks 2001 is now bootable so in case of emergency you can start your system with the CD (if your Bios supports bootable CDs) and launch the first rescue tools in order to repair your system. Only one bad point can be noticed when using the bootable CD: you can’t read NTFS hard drive contents with it. Also you can choose to run some of the most used Norton tools directly from the CD without the need to install the full suite. For example before installing SystemWorks 2001 you can use the ‘Fast & Safe’ component of Norton CleanSweep 2001 to free up hard disk space! The other tools that can run without the need to install are: Norton WinDoctor, Norton Unerase, Norton Disk Doctor and Norton WipeInfo. It's a neat solution to try repairing problems that even affect the ability to install new programs.

  
Norton SystemWorks 2001 'launch tools from CD'