Norton GoBack 4.0 [Old Version]

by Symantec

Product Features

• Restore system to healthy state after system problem or user error
• Retrieve deleted files easily; recover individual files or an entire hard drive
• Quickly find files or folders to restore with search bar
• Simple click rolls back disk drive to original state with SafeTry mode
• AutoBack for scheduling regular system resets

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002RQ0WS
• Item model number: 10276629
• Date first available at Amazon.com: August 17, 2004
• Average Customer Review: 2.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (52 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,252 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #6 in Software > Utilities > Memory Management
  • #80 in Software > Utilities > Backup
  • #87 in Software > Utilities > PC Maintenance

Product Description

Norton GoBack 4.0 handles PC troubles by rolling back your system to a healthy state. Retrieve deleted files, recover data in an emergency and take care of maintenance & troubleshooting. Recovering curcial information has never been easier! Retrieve deleted files easily -- even if they've been overwritten

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Resource hog, January 27, 2005

By 

David Margraf (Southlake, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norton GoBack 4.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I recently loaded GoBack 4 on my 2.8 GHz P4 with 1 gig of ram and SATA hard drive. It's a really fast XP Pro SP1 machine that I keep free of spyware, malware, viruses, unnecessary services; in short, degunked. GoBack dramatically slowed down my machine when running Adaware and Spybot SD. Also, after NAV 2002 scanned, the hard drive was in use for about an hour afterwards with, once again, a dramatic decline in performance. When used with other applications there was a noticable slow down. When two applications were running simultaneously performance degradations were worse. In addition, as noted by others, Symantec's support ranks with the worst.

I suspect it does a great job with recovery. I disabled it before I used that function. I get viruses extremely infrequently. If my antivirus software doesn't repair the problem, I format the hard drive and reload. I back up my important data to Zip discs or an external hard drive frequently and religiously.

If you are looking for a backup solution and don't mind a significant performance penalty, this program is one possibility. It's unfortunate that mainstream PC mags continue to highly recommend Symantec products without mentioning the consistent, serious problems noted by a high percentage of users. I have and will continue to vigorously avoid all Symantec products

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best $50 you will spend in your life, October 28, 2006

By 

D. Levy - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Norton GoBack 4.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I am a computer reseller. Every computer I provide a client (150+) gets a copy of Norton Goback.

This program has saved both my clients and me countless troubleshooting hours; as long as they catch a problem in about 3 days or so. We just restore the entire system back to a working point in time.

I cannot recommend this program enough.

I install this program on the computer right out of the box, and I use the custom setup during installtion to make the file size a full 8MB. I have never had any problems with this software.

I use this program on all of my personal and families computer's.

I could not live without this program. It is a real life saver.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Problem with GoBack is Hardware (bios) related to Intel processor on Dell Laptop, August 24, 2005

By 

Champagne Digital "Dennis Champagne" (Eastern Washington, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norton GoBack 4.0 [Old Version] (CD-ROM)

I've been using GoBack since version 2. I upgraded to version 3 for WinXP. In the last 5 or 6 years I'd only come across 2 hardware related problems that caused a problem for GoBack: I had a problem with a computer that had a GeForce2 video card, and I had a problem with a Sony Vaio computer because the mbr had been changed by GoBack and this didn't allow the Sony to run the program to burn the System and Software recovery backup discs that you need if the actual hard drive dies. I didn't find a work around for the video card problem and just changed the video card to a GeForce 4. For the Sony I uninstalled GoBack, ran the recovery disc creation software, and reinstalled GoBack. The Recovery Disc program is a run once program anyway...

Last week, a client that is using the Sony desktop bought a DEll Inspiron 6000 laptop and wanted it set up like his Sony as far as GoBack and another program called CasperXP which he uses to create a bootable copy of his whole system with all files, programs, etc. Every once in awhile his voice dictation software (Dragon) trashes his sound drivers on the Sony and he simply uses GoBack to restore to a complete working system again. Occasionally, something he does to his system has happened far enough in the past, usually due to DVD files using up the GoBack buffer and he can't GoBack far enough to fix a problem, so he uses CasperXP to copy his backup OS from a second drive that we installed. He backs up his entire drive to a second drive every week, and it's bootable!

Anyway, after installing GoBack on the Dell laptop, the machine would no longer boot. I suspected the problem was with the Dell hidden partitions they install for system recovery (as of July 15, 2005 Dell no longer ships the recovery discs and there is no program on the machine to burn them).

I told my client to call Dell as I think these discs should be included as he bought the system and shouldn't have to worry about getting them later if the hard drive fails. After being passed around to 4 or 5 people they finally decided to send him the discs and we reinstalled XP Pro after first removing the hidden partitions from the drive. We gained about 5 gigs back on a 80 gig drive, but we loose the Cntrl+F11 automatic system restore function from Dell.

We installed GoBack and damn! the program still wouldn't allow the OS to boot (We were getting a Blue Screen with an IRQ_ problem. After exploring the bios on the Dell laptop I noticed a setting in the "Security" area called "CPU XD Support". OK, what's this? Not much on Google, so the bios gives a description like "Execute Disable Bit Capability".

(...)

Searching this pdf file for "Execute Disable" lets you find out a little more about the function and the fact that this is a known problem with Intel processors and there is a planned fix. Apparently this is some sort of hardware solution in the processor for some type of "buffer overrun" error or attack.

The solution was to turn of this capability in the Dell bios. GoBack and all other features of XP pro are running fine.

To be fair to GoBack, Adaptec, then Roxio, and now Norton can not control a buggy CPU setting and I'm afraid that many manufacturers that are using this obsure setting in the bios for the Celeron chipset are going to have problems with GoBack and probably other softwares that will get branded as "crap" due to hardware changes.