Norton Utilities
Symantec Norton Utilities 15.0.0.122 running on Windows Vista
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| Developer(s) | Symantec |
|---|---|
| Stable release |
16.0.0.126 / August 26, 2012
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| Operating system | Windows, Classic Mac OS, Mac OS X, Unix |
| Type | Utility software |
| License | Trialware |
| Website | symantec |
Norton Utilities is a utility software suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain a computer. The current version of Norton Utilities is Norton Utilities 16 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8 was released October 26, 2012.
Peter Norton published the first version for DOS, The Norton Utilities, Release 1, in 1982. Release 2 came out about a year later, subsequent to the first hard drives for the IBM PC line. Peter Norton's company was sold to Symantec in 1990. However his name remains as a "brand" for Symantec's range of utility and security software for home users. Peter Norton himself has no connection to the brand or company.
The initial 1982 release supported DOS 1.x and featured the UNERASE utility. This allowed files to be undeleted by restoring the first letter of the directory entry (a feature of the FAT file system used in MS-DOS, albeit one that was not originally documented). The UNERASE utility was what launched NU on its path to success. Quoting Peter Norton, "Why did The Norton Utilities become such popular software? Well, industry wisdom has it that software becomes standard either by providing superior capabilities or by solving problems that were previously unsolvable. In 1982, when I sat down at my PC to write Unerase, I was solving a common problem to which there was no readily available solution."
14 programs were included, on three floppy disks, list price $80:
The main feature of this version supporting DOS 2.x was FILEFIND, used for searching for files. This 1983 release added hard disk support, and the PRINT program was renamed LPRINT to avoid conflict with the DOS command introduced in MS-DOS 2.0 as PRINT.COM. Following this release Norton became Utilities Editor of PC Magazine.
This version, copyrighted 1984 but dated Monday, January 21, 1985, included Directory Sort, Disk Test, File Attributes, File Find, File Size, Line Print, List Directories, System Information, Text Search, Volume Label, Wipe Disk and Wipe File.
This 1986 version added the Quick UnErase (QU) and Unremove Directory (UD) programs.
Release 4.0 (1987, list $99.95) added four new programs:
This version (list $150), released simultaneously with 4.0 standard edition, was dated Friday May 15, 1987. It added Speed Disk, a disk defragmenter, and Format Recover.
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