Review by Caraleisa

I installed Norton Utilities 16.0 from the CD and the install went fine. Then, I ran the 1-click system optimization/health thing… it found some registry problems, as I expected and had it fix them. Unfortunately it also decided that some things I did not want deleted should be… all histories from all applications, etc. I like to use my ‘recent’ files selections in many apps. Well, they were all gone. Not just internet browsing history, that would be fine. But last files used in Photoshop, in Word, etc. NOT okay.

Then it said I should defrag the HDs, and when I said to do that, I got a popup warning that ‘speed disk’ (which I assume is defragmentation??) will delete ALL Windows System Restore points. So, I said, stop. There is NO reason whatsoever to delete system restore points, rather, it should CREATE them before running any sort of fix. I couldn’t find any way to do a defrag without the deletions.

I tried the ‘find duplicate files’. It was totally indiscriminate, finding files which are shared and parts of applications. It found thousands. No way was I going to go through that list to see what should be removed and what should stay. And there was no way that I could find to do an advanced search - to exclude certain types. There was a minimal search modifier, but it was grossly insufficient.

I suppose this might be good for someone who has no idea what to do with their computer, and doesn’t really use it much. But for anyone who is a heavy user (I work on my machine from home) this won’t do the trick, and in my opinion, could actually make problems worse if you don’t have knowledge that is NOT provided with the utilities.