Norton SystemWorks 2005 Premier Single User [AntiVirus, Utilities, GoBack, Ghost, CheckIT]

Customer Reviews

Norton Systemworks 2006

2006-03-23
The product is laided with protection for Symantec. Customer service is very poor. I upgraded my P4 with an AMD 64 to get away from heating problems of a poorly designed motherboard. When I reinstalled Systemworks 2006 it changed my date by a year earlier. When I corrected the date the computer the software stop working because it was expired after only 2 months. It took a week for free e-mail support to respond and they were not very helpful. They want to protect themselves from piracy but yet make a very complex system with virtually no support. Hey guys there has to be a better way!!!! $29.95 to correct Symantec problems is too high of price to pay!!!

Worth a small fraction of the price.

2006-02-05
Norton anti-virus worked pretty good for me until recently when the Live Update feature decided on its own not to work anymore. Now it's a huge hassle to upgrade the virus definitions. I have to log onto the web site, click through a bunch of pages and find the right virus definition file. Definitely not what I had in mind for virus protection. I would recommend another product if that's what you are getting this for.

Norton Ghost is completely useless. All it will do is create Norton Ghost backup files. It will not create an image of your hard drive, like 99.9% of all people that would consider purchasing Norton Ghost, want to do. Instead it will just create special files that only Norton Ghost can read. So Norton Ghost can be thrown into the wastebasket or not installed in the first place.

What I recommend instead of Norton Ghost is Maxtor's excellent MaxBlaster. With that fine (and free) utility, I made a mirror image of my hard drive with zero problems and very quickly too. Maxtor is a hard drive manufacturer, and they include Maxblast when you buy their excellent and inexpensive hard drives.

Norton Ghost, I bought and instantly regretted buying. It is of no use to me whatsoever and I can't imagine why anyone would ever want it.

Norton Utilities are sometimes useful. The defragmenter works OK most of the time, though for many users it complains about "The drive is being used by a different resource and cannot be degragmented at this time."

Overall, a utility of moderate to low usefulness.

NORTONS ** RIPOFF **

2006-01-29
I've used Nortons since 1991 and it saved my bacon a few times. But it also fried me too. Now I am jack of the product.

Recall how a car would be a classic. Then they'd add auto and smog controls. Then it would beef up oh so heavy. Well thats whats happened with Nortons.

Ive got copies here going way back, but now tech support costs more than the product. I just grabbed one of my old laptops and thought I'd update it. Put NSW 2005 into the drive, did the install (the ink used to record its registration number rubs off onto your fingers) and finally it says I've installed it too many times and it refuses to **activate**.

Come on Nortons ! I mean yeah, I've got your disks all over the place. Oh I used 2005 not the 2006 copy. Dare I install 2006 ? How many times can I install it Mr. Norton?? There's no mention on the box of this limitation. Theres nothing on the readme file. Boy this product really sux now. I am going to start using freeware from now on. You personally can run the product from the CD but there is no undo engine, nor will you have the pleasure of any essential updates.

Goodbye, no, bye Mr. Norton.

Quite possibly the worst product ever

2005-12-25
This software is a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. I purchased it online for $60 direct from Symantec's website. At the end of the installation, a warning pop up said that I may need to reinstall my hard drive controller drivers upon rebooting (I knew then that I was in trouble). This was followed by the "option" to restart my computer in order to complete the install. That was over one month, one replacement motherboard, and a new hard drive ago. I still can't get my system working, nor has any professional been able to help.

AVOID NORTON SYSTEM WORKS LIKE THE PLAGUE!!!

Norton's day seems over; Peter should have taken his name with him!

2005-12-04
Peter Norton was the savior of many a computer user and consultant. There were few programs that I absolutely depended upon more than Norton Utilities but somewhere between 2002 and 2004 that all changed. The program was probably rewritten from scratch to accommodate Windows XP.

After Peter Norton sold it to the "slicks", the "meat" started disappearing, but it still worked ... sorta. Code bloat became really ugly and new versions often had only cosmetic differences. The worse that happened before 2003 was that some very useful aspects of it such as the hardware diagnostics and disk editing modules were pulled with neither explanation nor alternative offerings.

Now it no longer works well. I have had many a virgin installation crash and worse than that:
1 - You could not reinstall it
2 - You could not uninstall it
3 - Norton wanted $35 before they would even talk to you even if you had only had the product for a half hour
4 - You could not get a refund
5 - and the mail in rebate for the overpriced version, well let's not even go there!

Norton produced serveral little fix it tools. I did not use them all but the ones I did use did not work completely. They cleaned up some of the problems but not them all. Since then, to solve the problems it has caused, I've either had to spend a few hours of registry editing or wipe the machine and restart.

I do not believe that Symantec hires only incompetent programmers. I do believe that the company is probably run by shortsighted stockholders who know nothing about the business but only want to maximize the bottom line. Squeezing out highly competent and probably expensive employees has resulted in a dramatic decrease in product quality. Once again short term gains will kill a once valuable product. There are many quality alternatives that I'll look over while listening to the death knell increase in intensity of a ex-industry leader.

I guess I wont buy it.. not after all these negative reviews.

2007-01-27
Ater all the negative reviews this product suffered here, and on other boards, I will NOT be buying SystemWorks.
It seems like this product is being served before it's time and they need to spend more time in QA than a rush to market. Let them experiment on their own machines - my data is a not a 'field test'

No way will I buy this at this time.... thanks for all the critical reviews.

14 Years of Norton but never again

2007-01-03
For over fourteen years I had been using Norton's utilities, starting with my first 8088 PC, but I will never purchase any product from Symantec again. Attempting to purchase and update Norton's antivirus utility proved to be one of my most challenging computer tasks to date. Removing all traces of Norton from my system after finally deciding to forgo using Norton was just as difficult. It may have been quicker to have reformatted my hard drives and to have reinstalled all my software - it certainly would have been less frustrating. Norton provided no help in the matter.

Slows down your computer like crazy. For AV, use NOD32 instead

2006-12-22
I've not much opinion about most of NSW, but I do have to say that I've used both NSW 2003 and 2005, with each clobbering my system nearly outright.

My systems: Win XP Pro SP2 / 3.0 Ghz P4 / 800 Mhz FSB

When I switched to NOD32 all the slowness vanished. As a software engineer for 20 years, I am well aware of how programs can bloat.

And this one is an unbelievable dog.

unhappy with works

2006-04-08
If this was only about performance i would have to give a 5 star rating. But this is not about performance. I bought my norton sys.works a little over a year ago. recently i bought a new computer when i went to install sys.works on it it said it had been installed on too many computers. Told me to send in my copy of norton along w/serial# and the receipt from where i purchased it. now its been over a year, now if some of you guys out there deep receipts like this over a year, then maybe its just me, buts but the amount it cost me for the software i expect it to be mine. But now because i don't have a receipt they are taking it back

Norton Nightmare on Symantec Street

2006-03-31
My 2002 Norton Systemworks service, a reliable, seamless product was due to expire at the end of March 2006. Naturally, I tried to renew the subscription but was directed by Symantec web site to continue service by the only available option, the wonderous 2006 Internet Security/Systemworks package. My 2002 version would no longer support a simple yearly extension as it did three consecutive years prior. Without hesitation, I paged into the Symantec web site and purchased the new version online. After a successful download, I proceeded to install the product, only to have it cough up an error message halfway through the process. Strangely enough, the progress bar on the install began to go backwards and then submit a pop-up message directing me to click a link and follow the instructions within. Unfortunately, all my files on my system turned into dead links with a .lnk extension and would not open, including the message itself. I could not even open up the control panel, and the process of booting into safe mode and other failsafe methods proved futile. I did open up my administration error logs and found that this accursed product from hell tampered with my registry, particularly the class root portion that controls the file extension, and that the explorer.exe shell related to this situation was also disabled.

Notwithstanding, I had to completely reinstall Windows XP from scratch.

So far I have received a credit for the download fee but not for the disastrous product itself after filling out a letter of destruction form; a refund request takes 7 to 10 business days, but that time allotment is about to expire, and I will raise holy hell if my refund goes undelivered.

The "customer support" seems well hidden behind a shroud of links that do not lead to an actual service tech. I wonder why?

Just for the record, avoid this bloated, ineffectual piece of garbage with all costs. Go with a freebie like AVG7 combined with Ad-Aware, Zone Alarm, and other tools, which defeat the purpose of being taken for a ride by the likes of this company...