Entered CNET Catalog: 09/13/2004
SKU: E31752
Manufacturer: Symantec Corporation
Manufacturer description
Symantec's Norton GoBack 4.0 allows you to easily undo PC problems. Restore your PC to a healthy state by going back minutes, hours, or even days (depending on available disk space). Also use Norton GoBack to restore files that have been deleted or modified, and to try new software safely.User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
User Rating: 
8/10
Great program for one operating system
Pros: 1) Easy to use
2) Support restore of single files if a file get corrupted
3) Support restore of entire hard disk(s) if something go wrong.
4) If you have more than one hard disk can restore them in different times.
Cons: 1) Don't support dual boot. But this is due to the nature of software.
2) Incompatible with other back-up and restoring software.
3) Symantec stop the product. Norton Ghost replace GoBack, even used both programs GoBack is better.
I am able to use and try any BETA program any BETA driver,and if things don't work as expected simply Go Back to a previous state.
Too bad Symantec stopped the program. Neither Norton Ghost, or save and restore have the same functionallity as GoBack 4.0.
Using it from 2000,(came as support software with a SCZI controller from ADAPTEC) never needed to do a format since January 2006 (replace Win98 SE with XP) and from then till now (still using XP).
I wish symantec continue the program, but I think it's a companies behaviour to stop all the worthy programs.
Did it with norton utillities,every year utillites have less options for more money. did it with Registry editor, did it with anti-virus, "heavier" engine with less options, etc.
Recommend GoBack to any user use Windows XP,or VISTA. Even not official support under VISTA.
Updated on Jan 13, 2009Not recomend it for people who use dual boot system or other backup util;lity as goback not compatible.
User Rating: 
1/10
The worst product i have ever seen
Pros: absolutely none
Cons: destroys your system, and rewrites your mbr!!!
User Rating: 1/10
Lost my hard drive contents -- had to format drive and start from scratch
Pros: I don't know... it killed my hard drive
Cons: Killed my hard drive
User Rating: 
2/10
Flirting with disaster - BEWARE!
Pros: Name recognition in the industry
Cons: Manipulates the operating system - where it doesn't belong
User Rating: 1/10
Four hours to uninstall it and still counting!
Pros: It promises a good recovery service over and above System restore
Cons: BUT it ground my hard disk for all the time I was rebuilding my new PC system. GoBack had to be the culprit. My system was crawling and my 250GB disk spluttering for the whole time.
User Rating: 2/10
Eats resources and takes hours to uninstall
Pros: Better than MS system restore which never works
Cons: Drains resources
User Rating: 2/10
Scariest Software EVER
Pros: Can't think of one, considering it crashed my computer before I could even try it
Cons: Destroyed my computer
User Rating: 1/10
Buy Norton GoBack only if you are certifiably insane.
Pros: None whatsoever.
Cons: Almost guaranteed to make your system unstable and most probably inoperative.
Symantec's final hint for repair is "reinstall your OS". All I have to say about GoBack is you REALLY go back a long ways. Right back to the very start, including reinstalling all your other software to get your system back into operation. My recommendation for GoBack is stay AWAY AS FAR AS POSSIBLE.
After experiencing my own Go Back disaster, I surfed the net for information about GoBack and found many forums where similar situations were described. As a final hint to CNet, someone should tell Dan Costa to review this product once or twice again, to save thousands of us from this type of problem.
User Rating: 
10/10
pc life saver
Pros: My PC crashed I tried to reinstall Windows XP twice, both times it failed. Noton go-back saved my PC
Cons: slow PC startup
Dell told me to take in my hard drive and have them try to save all my files then they would guide me throught the whole Windows reinstallation.
Go-Back came up on my screen as usual but i had never used it before. I tried it as a last resort. I restored my PC
to 9:00am of the day I crashed. It restored everything. I have been trying to save my PC since 8:00pm it is now 4:am.
If i had used Go-Back at 8:00 pm i would be in bed now. I am so thank-full that I had Norton Go-Back
It is worth every penny I spent
Thank you so much, you saved me!
User Rating: 1/10
Absolute Garbage
Pros: There aren't any
Cons: There are no "pro's"
User Rating: 
7/10
Used with Win XP this utility works great .
Pros: Saved my bacon more than once.
Cons: It does take up some HD space so would not recommend for use with small hard drives or less than Win XP operating system.
User Rating: 1/10
CNET 7.6 my hard drive 0.0
Pros: It can be deleted by reformating your hard drive.
Cons: Re-enforces the need to back up frequently
I almost lost the pictures of my new daughter. Luckily thanks to the help of others I was able to retrieve the data that was not yet on backup.
CNET gave this a good rating of 7.6. What is wrong with you guys? Have you sold your soul to Norton?
Look at the user reviews! This thing is a menace to society. CNET needs to step in a revise their rating or they are complicit in screwing up their user's data.
User Rating: 1/10
A TOTAL DISASTER. Deserves a negative rating
Pros: None at all, This is an awful program
Cons: Truly a horrid program. Took days to recover from it.
Its constantly writing and reading disks, so that it eats of processor and system computing time.
INSTALLING IT REWRITES THE BOOT SECTOR of each disk it "protects" (I say that with extreme sarcasm). I had a system crash (caused, I believe, by GoBack's constant disk reads and writes), and when I tried to reboot, Windows XP would not start up.
When I used a recovery disk to start up the program, NONE OF MY HARD DRIVES WAS VISIBLE
EVEN IN DOS!!!!! That's because GoBack changed the boot sector could no longer be accessed by the system. That meant my C, D, and E hard drives (each a separate physical drive) could not be accessed.
I use my E drive to back up lots of files. I freaked when all that data seemed to have just disappeared.
I ran a diagnostic utility from a floppy disk (Partition Magic 8.0's recovery disks), and it reported that the phsyical drives were not formatted.
I couldn't do a Windows Installer Repair, because the installer requires the presence of the old, damaged program on a formatted disk.
I couldn't boot up, I couldn't access the Internet to find out what to do. There was nothing in the Norton materials which told me about what had happened.
I had no idea that the problem was due to GoBack's malfunctioning.
Believe me when I say that, had Norton informed me from the outset that GoBack rewrites the boot sector, I NEVER would have installed it.
I couldn't even access GoBack at system start-up, because the boot-time entrance to GoBack (Space Bar) was no longer appearing.
It took me days to figure out what had happened and to rescue my data, some of which I lost.
Norton should have warned me about this potential problem, but didn't. That is nothing but corporate irresponsibility.
I also think its consumer fraud.
User Rating: 1/10
I am SO MAD with this worthless product
Pros: If you like to loose all your stuff, go for it.
Cons: Everything, waste of time and DATA
I recently installed Norton system works basic 2006 which came bundled with version 4.0. of Go-Back on my HP Laptop. I didn't see any harm in installing it so I let it do so. After it installed I noticed how sluggish my system appeared to be and I concluded it was the GoBack at work. After a month, I decided to remove Go-Back so I did this??.
control panel/
Add remove programs/
Norton system works/
Modify/
Unchecked the go back box/
Enter
After the removal/
Reboot
It booted up and went to a GoBack splash screen and appeared to be uninstalling. After it finished a screen pops up with a message (155) from Norton stating it was uninstalled improperly and there might be errors on the disk. It also stated I should run scan disk ASAP. This is all fine and dandy except now when I boot up I can get to bios, but nothing else. It always goes immediately to the GoBack screen which tells me the uninstall had possible errors click ok. I click ok and it says press spacebar for more options or wait for continuing of boot. If I press spacebar or not it just continues to go through this over and over in a loop.
I?ve tried CNTL+ALT+G,
I?ve tried Norton?s ngbboot.iso with option 1 thru 4 and F
I?ve tried F8 on Boot
All unsuccessful in resolving this issue. No Change to the system.
My Laptop first sees the Norton Go-Back boot splash and a continuous loop.
I've tried inserting my XP disk to get to the recovery console and ran chkdsk C: /r
and, No Joy.
I then ran the recovery console again and ran FIXMBR and ended up with Blue screen. Could not boot into Safe Mode, could not boot into normal mode.
Tried to reinstall on top of existing NTSF partition and get ?unable to install, windows does not recognize the partition.
This product is just plain CRAP/GARBAGE/#*%$#$#$
Symantec should be ashamed, this kind of problem should not happen with today?s software. I have a HP 4900 series Laptop with XP home sp2. Symantec support is week and offers nothing.
Dont even consider it.
User Rating: 1/10
Do not even GoThere in the first place cause you can't GoBack!
Pros: Pretty Box
Cons: Destroys your hard drive and data unless you're very lucky.
User Rating: 1/10
Don't waste your money and time
Pros: May give you a false sense of security for a while
Cons: Blew up Hard Drive
User Rating: 1/10
Run away from this software
Pros: None i can find
Cons: Hard drives are gone
User Rating: 1/10
This program is not ready for general release
Pros: None that I could see
Cons: It takes over your hard disk
Whenever it scanned the drive (which was often), it slowed down or interfered with other disk i/o operations, such as Windows automatic updates, automatic spyware scans, and even its own Symantec live update. As a result, I had lots of error messages and disk problems. I uninstalled it after only one day before it could do any real damage.
The only way I can explain the good rating assigned by CNET is that this program requires huge resources and will perform well on machines that have them. Older machines like mine are better off without it.
User Rating: 1/10
DO NOT INSTALL
Pros: THERE ARE NONE
Cons: WILL CRASH YOUR HARDRIVE
User Rating: 10/10
For Years The Best!
Pros: Works like a charm, just as advertised.
Cons: Way too many complainers for nothing.
User Rating: 1/10
23 Year Computer Veteran Says "STAY AWAY"!
Pros: Makes me a LOT of money!
Cons: Costs my clients a LOT of money!
User Rating: 
9/10
An excellent program
Pros: effective and simple to use
Cons: generally only a 2 to 3 day disk image held
The only shortcoming of the program is that it reserves 10% of your hard drive for keeping the disk images. This gives you a 2 or 3 day revert window with multiple revert/safe points. If your hard drive is almost full this can be a problem, on the other hand, if you have a large hard drive and can spare the space I would suggest giving GB more drive space to give you a longer GoBack period.
User Rating: 1/10
GoBack Trashed Two Different Computers
Pros: None that I can see
Cons: Made XP Pro system unbootable; also killed my Win98SE machine
Similarly, I installed SystemWorks 5 on my father's Win98SE computer successfully; but after installing GoBack 4.0, it was no longer able to write to the c: drive. Any effort to fix the problem using Norton Utilities (Disk Doctor) resulted in an endless loop of restarts after completing 40-50%. Attempting to run Norton Speed Disk results in error that it cannot write to a specific Disk Sector, and it then begins to run Disk Doctor (in the endless loop mode). These errors persisted even after uninstalling GoBack and SystemWorks; I was only able to overcome the problems after deleting all references to Norton and Symantec from my "files and folders" search, and all references to Norton and Symantec in the registry. Not exactly what I expected from a mainstream computer utility that has received high praise for previous versions.
Bottom Line: SystemWorks seems to work fine, but use GoBack 4.0 at your own risk (risk that is quite considerable for losing access to your hard drive, if you search on Google to see how many others have had similar problems with this product!).
User Rating: 2/10
Cannot recommend
Pros: It probably works, didn't actually test it
Cons: Will run your drive into the ground, near impossible to uninstall
These problems wouldn't have bothered me that much, though, if it weren't for three other factors: 1) the reason I decided to scrap GoBack, it kept accessing my hard drive... now that's fine if you know you're going to replace your computer in a couple of years, but if you plan on keeping it around for a while, this is just running your hard drive into the ground. I should know: I just had my laptop's hard drive die on me because I had it working over time indexing my hard drive with one of those desktop search programs. Another reason not to use GoBack is 2) it's near impossible to uninstall. It kept freezing during the "eliminating archive" (or whatever it was called) period during bootup, and ultimately I had to go to Symantec's website and track down a tool to use from a boot disk before I could uninstall it. This kind of unreliability does not give me faith in this product. Neither does the fact that 3) 80% of most of the user reviews I've read online have given this product negative reviews for basically screwing their computers up in one way or another. I wish I had researched it beyond just taking PC Magazine's word on it before I installed GoBack. Norton Utilities (in SystemWorks) has a built-in deleted-file protection program already, so between that and Windows System Restore, your system settings and documents should be relatively safe. SystemWorks 2005 is a decent product (if a bit confusing to use at times), just don't install GoBack.
User Rating: 
3/10
Will tear apart your boot sector and MBR
Pros: Actually did work in some respects
Cons: Takes over the hard drive and no warning is given.
User Rating: 9/10
Great program
Pros: Total recovery
Cons: minor performance hit
I recently installed 4.0 on a machine with XP and it is working fine. It seems better optimized than before. No problems at all.
If you are going to be doing something that requires massive disk access or working with huge files (hundreds of megs), you may want to disable GoBack before starting, because the heavy drive access will bog your computer down a bit.
But, for ordinary usage GoBack can't be beat!
User Rating: 3/10
If you are a medium+ user dont use this
Pros: -Restore Files to earlyer time
Cons: -Crashes PC
User Rating: 2/10
Norton ruined the product
Pros: Increased GoBack transaction log to 8GB
Cons: Changes from 3.0 ruined the product
In the old release after a disk restore you were presented with a list of files that you could select from by simply placing a check in a box to recover those files back from before you committed the restore. This functionality is now GONE.
Instead now you have to pick ONE FILE AT A TIME!
Garbage, I have gone back to version 3.0.
User Rating: 
4/10
I think it caused bluescreen crashes
Pros: A nice idea when it works
Cons: See one-line summary
User Rating: 1/10
HORRIBLE, CRASHED MY HARD DRIVE!!!
Pros: Staples let me return the software with out hassle.
Cons: After installation I was asked by GoBack to "Restart my computer." That was the last time my harddrive worked.
User Rating: 1/10
Corrupts Win98SE, not compatible with Norton System Works 2005
Pros: Could not find any
Cons: After 2 days of install it corrupted the system. Does not seem compatible with Norton System Works 2005
User Rating: 7/10
Best One!!
Pros: all the features mentioned!!
Cons: it takes up too much disk space and memory, otherwise it's 10/10
