Symantec Norton SystemWorks 2001

To state the blindingly obvious, doubtless to peals of hollow laughter up and down the land, the problem with Windows is that it's prone to break at the most inopportune moments. Running ScanDisk from time to time and regularly defragmenting your disks can help to keep the wheels oiled, but the very fact that there's a market for utility suites is evidence enough that Windows can benefit from a helping hand.

Previous owners of Norton SystemWorks will find all the old favourites here - with the welcome exception of CrashGuard - logically divided into four sections: Utilities, AntiVirus, CleanSweep and SymantecWeb. This fourth element is merely a link to a web service that scans your system for outdated programs, checks for security vulnerabilities and offers a subscription-based help service.

The big change is the introduction of One Button Checkup. This combines many of the suite's main features in a single operation, such as scanning the registry, monitoring disk fragmentation and analysing program and disk problems. It's a nice idea but in our tests the quick-fix approach actually led to further difficulties. Time after time, the system was brought to a temporary standstill by an 'error writing to disk' message either during the check-up itself or when the automatic error correction process was running. SystemWorks proved unable to work around these 'blue screens of near-death' episodes, or to provide a rational explanation for their sudden appearance.

Norton AntiVirus is a key component here and is certainly one of the best of the breed. Full-scale background protection is on by default - recommended if you have no other antivirus program pre-installed - and a useful new feature downloads database updates whenever it detects an open internet connection.

Any system maintenance tool works best when it's installed right from the start and not merely brought in as a last resort to sort out a diskful of trouble. This is particularly true of CleanSweep. During the installation of a new application, CleanSweep notes changes to the system configuration and logs the location of program files. This makes a later clear-out a simple matter of reversing the original installation. It doesn't always work faultlessly but it usually makes a much better fist of it than Windows left to its own rather rusty devices.

CleanSweep also archives infrequently used programs to save space and lets you move a copy of a program to a different drive or a separate computer. Internet clutter - cached files, cookies, plug-ins, and the like - is equally swept away on demand and default backups mean that you can always backtrack if you get a little over eager with the virtual broom.

The Utilities section hosts the standard but commendable collection of Norton tools that can assist both the novice and the expert with all manner of system maintenance, from monitoring resources through to editing and backing up the registry. What SystemWorks perhaps lacks most is a 'step-back-in-time' tool that sorts out problems by the simple trick of taking the entire system back to the way it was before disaster struck. Norton Image, however, will take snapshots of critical system files and this can help recover lost files or folders. The Recycle Bin is also protected so that 'permanently' deleted files can usually be retrieved.

Contact
Symantec 020 7616 5600

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