Review by brainout

Wow, I thought that I’d already done a review on this product. Will do one, now! Norton SW has saved my machines, almost daily, certainly at least once a month, for years. I just bought three more of these NSW 2006, as I couldn’t find them before (now have 9 sets, and I think each license is good for up to 3 machines). You can use the program from the CD, don’t have to install it. So test usage on your machine via the CD, first.

I love this program suite. Been using this since my first Windows PC which someone had thrown into the trash, in the year 2000. It was due to NSW 2000 that I was able to resurrect that PC’s registry. It was a Win95 machine which the owner (who didn’t know how to wipe his hard drive) was trying to convert to Win98. He couldn’t do it, so trashed the machine. A janitor named Jesus who knew me, decided he wanted to save the trashed machine for me. Two weeks later, on my pastor’s birthday or at least the first week of it (1st April), he found me and gave me that Micron machine. So I’ve been using this program since 2000.

So obviously when NSW 2006 came along, me and my newly-purchased XP were glad to get it. With this, you can rescue your machine from updates, from installations, from anything that goes on, using GoBack (I had GoBack already from Wildfile, but Norton purchased it.) Atop that, are the myriad of utilities which Norton was long famous for in DOS and earlier Windows. Plus, many utilities in the ‘Optimizer’ and ‘Check It Diagnostics’ that make Windows much easier to use.

Then there’s One Button Checkup. For Win98 machines, it’s a godsend. You can do just about anything to edit or fix your registry, because ‘one button’ only means AUTOMATING the process, versus the rest of the utilities, which can be manually or interactively run. Seriously, if you still use Win98 you need this program. Two big categories of registry fixes are for drive letters or folder location changes (i.e., if you move a program from one location to another), and for entries referring to uninstalled programs which you didn’t install using Norton Clean Sweep. The more such entries clog your registry, the slower Windows is to boot, and eventually it can’t boot. So cleaning the registry is vital. But for most people, cleaning it seems daunting, and yes can be dangerous. That’s why this program is such a godsend. I didn’t even know anything about Windows when I got that trashed machine. But thanks to Norton, I could learn quickly, and got it up and running.

Now for XP, this wonderful program which resurrected my Windows machine from Jesus in second review paragraph – the XP version, is not as flexible and helpful. But it’s not bad. It finds and fixes bad registry entries usually left behind due to program or Windows updates. I still run it weekly on my XP machines (I now have five). You always have ‘undo’, so if you changed something, you can undo the change and restore the machine as if your ‘fix’ never occurred. It can no longer properly edit the registry. But for that, you can get TuneUp Utilities 2011 and later, which has the same functions as Norton here, and many more. (TuneUp doesn’t have GoBack or virus programs, however.)nnThere have always been complaints about NSW since Symantec took them over. I echo those complaints. But the solution, is to never install the virus protection, and to turn off Live Update (which you are forced to install). I learned to do that, early on.

Don’t let the partially-bad stuff reported (generally correctly) keep you from buying this, if you are still on XP. GoBack alone is worth several days’ angst each time Windows update or some program update, crashes your machine. Many people swear by it, so just look for the reviews, or Google on ‘GoBack’, see what folks are saying. For me, it’s a must-have. It doesn’t work with EASEUS or Acronis or Rebit, but DOES work with Macrium Reflect 5 Pro.

Seriously: I’ve used this program daily for 13 years. GoBack in particular has saved Windows crashes so often, I’ve lost count. You can turn it off and on, and yes when you do that there’s a long wait, because GoBack deletes all its continuous snapshots it takes of your machine’s operation. But honey, when you have a crash, and GoBack boots pre Windows, it’s the sweetest thing to literally TURN THE CLOCK BACK to the time when your machine was working. In addition, you get to see all of what happened just prior to the crash, so you can tell WHY something went wrong. (That’s how you even know when to turn the clock back, GoBack keeps a continual log of computer operations.)nnIf by contrast you’re on Windows 7 and want to know what is the next-best-thing, try TuneUp Utilities. I reviewed TuneUp 2011 here in Amazon a year ago, and with it 2012 and 2013. TuneUp does all the good stuff of Norton, except it has no GoBack (but MagiCure does, operating a bit differently, so too Macrium Reflect 5 Pro). TuneUp has no anti-virus programs or utilities, so you don’t have to worry about that. :)nnI realize this review needs to be more specific about what these utilities are: but there are too many to list. Just put your questions as comments to this review. Amazon emails me per comment, so I’ll know, and come answer you.

Essentially, your PC needs a lot of housekeeping, and you probably dislike at least a few of Windows’ defaults. So unless you’re willing to learn ‘GodMode’ in Windows (a secret Windows folder you create to access a table of contents for tweaking EVERYTHING in Windows, Google on the term), get this: and this, is safer.