Norton SystemWorks/Utilities:

The feedback we have received on Norton Utilities and Norton SystemWorks (see previous coverage) was so voluminous that it has taken us several days to work though.

While reader reaction was mixed, the balance definitely leaned to the negative end of the scale, especially in reference to SystemWorks. A substantial number of users have reported freezes and errors apparently triggered by SystemWorks software. A few readers have been forced to restore from backups and rebuild the drive, because changes made by SystemWorks were not fixable. Although many of the specifics remained lone reports, and thus cannot yet be confirmed, the overall number of problem reports was unusually high.

Before posting this report, we also asked Symantec for replies to these comments. What follows are highlights of reader reports and Symantec's replies.

[Also check out these recently started QuickTopic threads on Norton Utilities 7 and SystemWorks 2.0.]

Reader comments:

SystemWorks the cause of instability? A number of users have noted that SystemWorks installs a number of kernel extensions and other support files, and although its impossible for us to conclude, based on the reports we have seen, that these are the source of the problems, Bill Cavanaugh makes an interesting observation: "I recently bought the SystemWorks 2.0 upgrade and installed it on my G4/400. The install went OK, but Norton AntiVirus did not run without abruptly quitting during a scan. The same individually packaged non-SystemWorks OS 9.x versions of Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus don't seem to exhibit these kinds of problems." Another user points out that the installer does not allow a partial install of just Norton Utilities 7, the choice is all or nothing.

Disk Doctor more effective running under OS 9? This comment from Sean McNeely suggests that Norton Disk Doctor is more reliable under OS 9. He writes: "While running Norton Disk Doctor 7.0 on my primary System Drive it found a 'major' boot block error that it (of course) could not repair while I was using that System Drive, so I installed Norton Utilities 7.0 on my secondary System Drive (an actual second physical drive) and ran Disk Doctor from there. It couldn't repair the problem, and seemed to end its diagnosis there. Out of curiosity, I booted to OS 9 on that same secondary drive and ran Disk Doctor 6.03 from there and it found the same 'major' problem and fixed it...along with many other problems that 7 didn't even address."

Advantage of upgrading? Michiel Houtman comments that, if you expect your primary use of Norton Disk Doctor to be for repairing disks from a bootable CD, there appears to be little reason to upgrade. Even if you are running Mac OS X, "the Norton 7 CD is required for most repairs and uses OS 9.2 and is therefore dependent on Norton 6.0.3, which can fix both OS 9 and X." And, as we have commented here before, if you are running Mac OS 9, the upgrade does not use any of the 7.0 software.

Disk Doctor memory requirements in OS 9 Ted Grigg writes: "Booting in OS 9 from a removable or an external HD allows DD and Speed Disk to run, only if I allocate about 10 times the default memory to both programs. It appears the program chokes on the thousands of files involved in any OS X installation." Others have confirmed this.

Success stories Not everyone is having trouble, however. Dan Wellen's note was typical of many we received. He writes: "I installed SystemWorks and Firewall both in my iMac DV400 running 10.1.3 ,with 320 MB RAM, without any problems whatsoever. They have both been working as advertised and I have no complaints."

Mark Tennent adds: "As long-term users of Norton Tools we have been pleased with the new version of SystemWorks. The latest Disk Doctor allows us to check and repair the usual Volume Header problems and similar glitches without resorting to a restart and fsck or OS 9 versions of Disk Doctor."

Bill Eccles found that Norton Utilities 7 fixed a problem with his VST 30GB SmartDisk that neither Disk Utility nor DiskWarrior could fix.

Symantec replies:

Live Disk Repair Norton Disk Doctor does not perform major repairs on a live hard disk in Mac OS X. This is due to the nature of OS X. In addition to our ability to fix major and minor problems from bootable CD, Norton Disk Doctor can diagnose problems and fix minor issues, more than any other product running natively on Mac OS X.

We have chosen to keep OS 9 on our bootable CDs because it provides the broadest set of functionality to the broadest number of users. It is perfectly OK for users to boot from the OS 9 CD and repair their OS X drives.

Re: Advantage of upgrading? In our five new product releases for Macintosh, we've enabled the majority of our product line benefits to run native in Mac OS X. In Norton Utilities, we've built OS X native versions of Norton Disk Doctor, UnErase and FileSaver. No Mac utility product has more features for Mac OS X, either running natively from an OS X disk and running from bootable CD. In addition to being able to repair, optimize and recover OS 8/9/Xdisks from bootable CD, Norton SystemWorks also has AlSoft DiskWarrior RE for OS 8/9/X.

Perhaps the most unheralded new benefit in Norton Utilities for Macintosh v7 is the automatic protection provided by FileSaver. This feature records information in native Mac OS X that enables both UnErase and Volume Recover to recover data or volumes. This capability is unique to the platform. Norton AntiVirus v8.0 now has a native AutoProtect. Norton Personal Firewall and Norton Internet Security have a number of new features for OS X, including a stealth mode (firewall), ad blocking (Internet Security), and confidential information protection (Internet Security).

Major developers have been encouraged to develop exclusively for Mac OS X, and that's what all of them are doing. That said, Norton SystemWorks v2.0 includes AlSoft DiskWarrior Recovery Edition that will work on Mac OS 8/9/X.

Re: Specific Problems It's virtually impossible to comment on individual, anecdotal reports of system problems. Causes are dependent on OS, hardware, software configurations and product usage. Users experiencing difficulty should visit our tech support forum where they can get specific individual help. The URL's are: Norton Utilities 7, Norton AntiVirus 8, and Norton Personal Firewall 2.