Norton Utilities

The Norton Utilities releases were collections of software utilities. Peter Norton published the first version for DOS, The Norton Utilities, Release 1, ca 1981. Release 2 came out several years 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.

Norton Utilities Releases

Release 1

The initial release 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).

Related Topics:
FAT file system - MS-DOS

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Other utilities included the following:

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• ASK, used for batch file programming
• BEEP, causes the PC speaker to beep
• VERIFY

Following this release Peter Norton was made Utilities Editor of PC Magazine.

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Release 2

The main feature of this version was FILEFIND, used for searching for files. It has been suggested that this was copied from FINDFILE produced by On-disk Software, Weston, Massachusetts. Details of this are sketchy, but Norton lost his position as Utilities Editor shortly afterwards.

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Release 4.01

Release 4.01 included a number of features including Norton Disk Doctor, a disk defragmenter (SPEEDISK), a sector level disk editor, a system information diagnostic utility, and a disk caching program (NCACHE) that would eventually be licensed by Microsoft as SMARTDrive. This version also include a menu system to tie the utilities together called the Norton Integrator (NI). Previously the utilities were accessed by typing the command name (usually a cryptic 2 character name such as FF) at the DOS prompt.

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Release 6.2

Release 6.2 included more features, including a utility to perform low level formatting on hard disks (not supported on IDE hard disks), and changes such as password protection on the more "dangerous" utilities. It also included a licensed version of the 4DOS replacement for COMMAND.COM called NDOS. This version also allowed the choice of "classic" names (such as FF.EXE) or longer names (such as FINDFAST.EXE); these were configurable in the updated version of the Norton Integrator menu system.

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Norton Utilities/Systemworks for Windows

The Windows version of Norton Utilities was originally released for Microsoft Windows 95. Norton was in need of a major update as the VFAT system used by Windows 95 to provide long file names was incompatible with utilities such as SPEEDISK. Changes in the way Windows operates meant that many of the old utilities were either dropped completely or replaced with GUI based versions.

Related Topics:
Microsoft Windows 95 - VFAT system

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Norton Systemworks started off as a collection of tools which also included Norton Antivirus, Norton Internet Security and a number of other utilities that expanded as Symantec took over more and more utilities companies. SystemWorks continues to be a suite of utilities, but Norton Utilities is no longer available as a separate package. Norton Systemworks contains many features. These are listed at the Symantec website.

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