Customer Reviews

Norton Systemworks 2009 Premier Edition

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I upgraded thinking that my "old" 2005 version just HAD to be running out of gas. Most of the features are similar to the old. Defrag runs at about the same speed and looks to be the same. Antivirus is MUCH better and checks the Symantec web site about every 15 minutes for updates. It doesn't scan the whole file system any faster than it used to, however. What threw me was that they hid Ghost. When I go to the Symantec toolbar on the installed programs menu, it says "empty". Well it is still there but it is called Backup and Restore. But don't turn loose the whole Backup and Restore with its schedule unless you are prepared to wait a LONG time every few days. Backup and Restore take its piece of the machine from the top and everything else running appears as slow as Molasses!! And the "compare" it makes with the previous backup is glacial. After half an hour and 3% completed, I cancelled it. It would have taken all night at that speed!. So I used the hidden Ghost to still do backups but I do it just like I used to. I manually do it every two weeks, and I save the previous one as well as the new on my external hard drive so that I always have two to fall back on. From what I can tell (haven't tested it) the Recovery CD that comes with SystemWorks will still boot from the CD drive for real disasters and it should "unwrap" my Ghost backup to a new hard drive if that ever became necessary. This time I installed Checkit and it seems great. I had forgotten to in 2005. All in all a solid product once you tell it who is boss!!

Let me start out by saying that I'm a Software Engineer with over 25+ experience and have been working with PC's since IBM came out with their PC1 in the early '80s. While I'm certainly not an expert, I have installed my share of software over the years. In fact, this would be the 3rd version of Norton's SystemWorks (NSW) that I had installed on this PC.

As required, I uninstalled NSW 2006 using the Windows Add/Remove feature. I then installed my new NSW 12.0. Everything seemed to be going well until I ran the Live Update on the NSWs side. I had previously run it on the Norton AntiVirus side - they seem to be more disjoined in this version of NSW than in previous versions - and it worked as expected. On the NSWs side it failed utterly.

After several attempts to get it going on my own, I gave up. I then logged onto Symantec's support chat feature. The first tech spent about an hour and finally admitted that he could not help me and that he needed to turn me over to a NSWs expert. The NSWs expert tested Live Update and decided that the installation was corrupted.

His solution was the thing that nightmares are made of... . After running the Norton Removal Tool (nrt), he totally removed all of the Norton directories from my hard drive and removed all appearances of Norton from the Registry.dat file - this is the file that defines your PC. It took him about three hours of very hard and dangerous work. Dangerous because one mistake in the Registry, could have required me to reinstall my operating system and all other software on my PC, which is something that you never want to have to do.

Norton SystemWorks 12.0 now works on my machine, but I do get an odd error message when I boot the system: Access blocked: Drive C.

Along the way, he removed my Norton's WinFax Pro even though I had told him not to remove it early on in the process. This is the faxing software that I have been using for ages. It cannot be reinstalled on my computer. So I have gotten the latest in system protection at the lost of a favorite program. Norton no longer makes a fax program so I can't just buy an upgrade. I think the cost was too high.

One final note: the tech told me that I would have to do the same thing if I were to upgrade from NSWs 2006 to NSWs 12.0 on another PC. You can believe that I will not do so.

This product is off the chain. I have been using it for years. If your pc is working & you are not having a problem, you will love this product. If your pc is broken then you need to get a tech person to fix it fast. Then put Norton System Works to work on your pc. So many people have serious problems & then put this on your pc. Wrong! This is a product to keep your pc in running shape. If your pc has the minimum ram of 512 you can run this program. Although I would recommend at least 1 geg of ram for a any system. The more ram the better. I have used this products for years & other tech people have told me that Norton is too heavy on the system. I know its heavy on your system. I also know that if you follow the instruction with Norton System Works you will not have any problems. I have never had a problem since I have been buying this product. People who have problems with this products are not doing something right. I have put this product on over 100 pc's & never had a problem. All of the pc's are running just fine. This is a great product. I think it's unbeatable. You might just say when it's not broke, why change horses after 9 straight years of perfection. Take my advice & get at least 1 geg of ram to start. The best think about Norton is that it works in the back ground. The free stuff that is out there is not really free. Have you ever heard of anything that's free & really does a wonderful job. Air isn't even free any more. There is always a catch with free anything. You pay for what you get.

For a couple of years I used Norton System Works, and then Norton Sent me an Email telling me to "Upgrade" to Norton 360. 360 removed all of the System Works Utilities and didn't replace them with as much. To be sure there are things to like about 360, but under the protection of 360, I suffered catastrophic loss on three systems. A couple more I thought were lost and I repaired them with my System Works 2005 disk.

What did I learn from that?

I needed to renew a license on my Entertainment PC, which I bought refurbished and always had some glitches. I did a system restore and reformatted my hard drive to original set-up, and then loaded the new System Works 2009 Premier. Then I reloaded all the "add on" software for the PC. It now runs fast and flawless. It is my plan now to replace all the rest of my 360 PC's with System Works as soon as the renewal comes due.

Finally, I actually paid more at Symantec for the down load than the price of the box from Amazon.

Go figure

Software should make your life easier. The makers of anything "Norton" or "Symantec" seem to have an utterly different philosophy. This company's products sounded good .. but have caused me literally HOURS of frustration. I uninstalled this product in total disgust. I would as soon install a VIRUS onto my computer as I would any Symantec or Norton product. My advice: Install ANY sound competitor's product rather than the GARBAGE produced by this company -- you will save yourself a Ton of Frustration & cause your computer to Smile with contentment & be awed by your superior acumen.

1988, I started using (Peter)Norton's software products before Symantec bought Norton. I have used Norton SystemWorks for a long time, I was a Beta Tester so I got a good look at it before it was released. SystemWorks has gotten better over the years when Symantec bought smaller software companies and incorporated their products into new versions. SystemWorks does things (like GoBack) that Norton360 can't do, I don't see that Norton360 is a replacement for SystemWorks. Symantec has discontinued Norton SystemWorks. So I will be moving on, I will have to find a product from a different company. I have seen some good reviews for many FREE software programs, maybe I will save some Money. Sorry Symantec, I guess it's Good-Bye.
Symantec is a large company that, over the years, has bought up smaller companies just to get 1 or 2 of their very successful products and then discontinued (killed off) the rest, and Symantec has eventually discontinued the products they bought the smaller companies to get, thereby removing their competition forever.

For the last 3 years I have been buying the latest version of Norton on Amazon. The price has always been great vs retail, and it is usually less expensive than a new 1 year subscription from Norton. Product always arrives on time and as advertised. I buy all my software needs on Amazon!!

My husband and I were extremely unhappy with this product. It was very difficult to load on to the computer. We had a problem last year as well but decided to try again as this is the program we have always used. Our next purchase will probably be the McAfee system.

Good as always, this was just an additional copy as opposed to renewing a subscription

Congratulations to the Symantec team on a job well done--great product and great support!!! My incentive to purchase this software was not only to keep my computer running, which it does easily, but to restore my operating system and other programs without reloading everything from the CDs. The thought of reloading all the registration/activation codes and customization settings was depressing. I needed to replace two 5-yr old hard drives and since they were still functional, if the software didn't work for any reason, I could just reinstall them. I am a wannabe geek with a long way to go to understand how these things work. I used the process below:

1. Using Save and Restore, I created my backups of both drives on a 500 Gb USB powered hard drive. The backups are easy with the 2009 edition, which resolved the unsuccessful backups prevalent in previous editions. (I am using a 2004 Dell Precision 650 Workstation running Windows XP SP-3 and Norton Internet Security 2009. I have two large programs that are tricky to install and are no longer supported by the companies if anything went wrong, and very expensive to replace.)

2. I created a bootable Symantec Recovery Disk (SRD) using a rewriteable CD so it could be customized. I used a downloaded version of this software, which provided an ".iso" SRD file. This file was copied to the hard drive, then double-clicked, which automatically activated my CD burner (Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 Basic) to create the bootable CD, with the appropriate settings filled in!! I left the bootable CD in the CD burner, and created a custom SRD with my drivers on it, using the Save and Restore File/Create Recovery Disk command. Then I tested the CD by rebooting the computer to the CD and saw the recovery tools menu appear.

3. I replaced the hard drives. I added RAID to the hard drives using a menu during boot-up. This would not be necessary if you are not running RAID.

4. I restarted the computer with the SRD in the drive. After the recovery software came up, I plugged in and turned on the 500Gb USP powered hard drive with my system backups on it, and waited until it was recognized by the system. I selected "recover my computer". The wizard walked me through the process. I selected the latest backup to restore. In about 10 minutes, my entire system was on the new drives, identical to the old drives. Now that was easy!!!

Installation and Tech Support: The software allows 3 computers to use it. I installed it on a desktop and two laptops (different makers). The first two were flawless. The third one would not install properly and we eventually determined that it had trouble deleting a previous version. I used Online Chat technical support and allowed the analyst to access the computer to fix it. Although it took 5 tries to fix it, each analyst answered promptly (within 10 minutes), and tried to fix it. I quickly realized that my definition of the problem determined the solution applied. Looking back on it, the 5 tries were partly the result of my learning curve to describe the problem. I found if I don't get what I need, I take a break, and use Online Chat again. The 24/7 support is wonderful.