Reading the title you may have wondered why I feel so strongly, and I do. I will try to stress to you within this section why I despise Norton Utilities. Keep in mind that this is my account of the program, and like anything else, I assume it runs a little different on each computer.

This program has caused me more heartache than almost any other program on my computer. It constantly freezes up, slows down, or interrupts my computer experience.

The Few Respectable Points ~

It can find problems that you were completely unaware of, problems that happen behind the scenes. It does this using it's WinDoctor function. This scans your hard-drive and find corrupt, useless, and old files, among others. It can manually fix these problems also, though I am not sure how good a job it does for reasons I will later state.

The program can also perform an optimization on your disk. Basically this is just a defrag and a scandisk with a slight variation because it is the Norton version. You can perform these actions on your system normally by going to (Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Disk Defragmenter and Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->ScanDisk). Still, I was recently trying to fix a problem with those on my system and finally had to load on Norton Utilities and let it do it's version, but even that was having it's own troubles.

The Problems ~

This program at a glance seems more than worthy but with use it quickly burns out. I have been surfing the internet and countless times it has interrupted me with "CrashGuard," another program that is attached to the Norton Utilities but I believe it can be bought by itself. If you're lucky enough not to have it freeze up right there it offers the options to quit the program that is about to crash or fix the problem. It is about 50/50 whether it will crash anyway when you hit the option to fix the problem. If you tell it to close the program it is about 50/50 for it to crash also. Not very good odds for a program that is supposed to stop it, eh?

When loading on new software Norton Utilities will allow itself, with your permission, to monitor the installation and check the files afterward. This is not a big deal, aside from slowing up the installation process considerably. If you had a game or something on the system before you installed Norton Utilities it will always ask to monitor the installation when you start the game, mostly the kind of games that start up immediately upon entry into the CD-ROM drive.

The Program constantly runs. Because it monitors your system for errors, it must continuously be running. Ok, no problem right? Wrong. It slows down Everything, least of all booting up. Downloading off of the internet has never been slower and don't even get me started on playing online games. I cannot stand how slow it make everything. You can turn off the monitor when desired(every second you're on no doubt) but then it is no use and you have wasted your hard earned money.


Luckily for you, the consumer, if you are reading this then you are probably only considering buying this product. DON'T!!! I cannot stress that enough. There has to be something better out there. Nothing is better then this, unless of course you are a computer guru and can configure this thing to meet your every need perfectly. Most of us are not even close to that and I bet that most who are would not want to deal with such a horrendous program. Stay away.

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