Norton Systemworks 2009 Standard Edition

by Symantec

Product Features

• RET 1U

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B001FT1928
• Item model number: 14200023
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 10, 2008
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,339 in Software (See Top 100 in Software)
  • #73 in Software > Utilities > PC Maintenance
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Norton SystemWorks provides fast, continuous protection against viruses, spyware, and other malicious threats and boosts your computer's performance without slowing it down. Working quickly and quietly in the background, the included Norton AntiVirus requires little memory and few system resources. New rapid pulse updates and Norton Insight technology utilize extensive online intelligence to target only processes at risk, resulting in faster, fewer, and shorter scans. And the new Norton Protection System employs a multilayered set of security technologies that work in concert to detect, identify, and block attacks. Computers can be frustrating. Systems slow down, and important settings can change. Files, cookies, and fragments of web pages accumulate in your browser cache, slowing your online experience and monopolizing disk space. Norton SystemWorks utilities keep your computer in peak condition by stopping many of these everyday headaches before they even occur.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Don't DOWNGRADE to Systemworks 2009, July 6, 2009

By 

Frank Dutton (Many, LA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norton Systemworks 2009 Standard Edition (CD-ROM)

Systemworks 2009 is a DOWNGRADE (definitely not an upgrade!) from previous versions. If it were free, it still wouldn't be worth having.

Much remains the same, but one functionality has been totally screwed up. Many programs set SHORTCUTS to files. After you've used a program on some files and later move or delete those files, or even if the program itself does so, these shortcuts are often still in place. Now, if you work with a lot of files, as I do, over a short time this can mean several hundred shortcuts are set in your computer that are "dead" - they go nowhere. Obviously, this is not a good thing. Over a longer period of time, this is THOUSANDS of invalid shortcuts!

In the past, Systemworks would find these non-functional shortcuts and bring them up for repair. It would find the file the shortcut originally pointed to, if it could. At repair time you could choose to have the shortcut reset to point to the new file location, or delete the shortcut. And for those shortcuts that were orphans(file it originally pointed to can't be found), Systemworks would just delete the invalid shortcut. Worked good. Makes sense. That's what anyone would do.

The new program just tells YOU to go into the registry and edit the shortcut yourself to fix it - and YOU figure out where the file is (since Systemworks couldn't find it - or didn't look). OK, so you don't want to do that (who would?) - you simply want to delete the shortcut. SORRY! Systemworks will no longer do that. If you can manage to find each individual of those hundreds of invalid shortcuts, you will have to delete them yourself. Be sure to do it right, or you screw up your Registry and then you really have problems.

Why would Norton (or any other company) cut the usefulness of their programs? Especially with new Windows operating systems already doing many of the functions these programs provide?

If you get Systemworks 2009 you will be downgrading from any previous version you may own. If you don't have Systemworks - opt for an older version and hope it will work on Windows 7 when that comes out.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Deceptive billing practices and no customer service, January 12, 2009

By 

J. Janzen (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Norton Systemworks 2009 Standard Edition (CD-ROM)

Purchased Norton System Works, which included a 1-year subscription to updates. Installation was a huge pain, requiring more than 6 reboots and 3 more downloads beyond the initial software download. Thankfully, I know enough about computers to trudge through it all without any help. Then, after it was paid for and installed, they sent me an email indicating that they will retain my credit card information, because my purchase of System Works serves as proof that I agree to allow them to charge me for future upgrades and updates automatically. I never agreed to that. So, I went to their website and tried to contact "customer service". No phone numbers and all i can do is fill out request forms which remain unanswered. I will be contact Visa and my state attorney general next. I thought Norton/Symantec were very reputable names, but I was greatly mistaken.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dissappointing, doesn't live up to its hype, January 20, 2009

By 

HealthAdminGuy - See all my reviews

This review is from: Norton Systemworks 2009 Standard Edition (CD-ROM)

I had what I thought was a simple problem. My PC was freezing due to some file errors, but chkdsk/f would not correct the problems because windows saw the the drive as "RAW," which supposedly means the drive is unformatted. Usually, the files on a RAW drive would not even be accessible, but in my case they were.

I figured that the Norton Disk Doctor component of this package would take care of the problem in short order, but instead, the worthless piece of crap software would "complete" the diagnostics in about 5 seconds (including the surface scan) and reported that the drive had NO PROBLEMS! Windows chkdsk was able to list the actual errors in the file structure, so I knew that they were present. After screwing around with this worthless dog of a program for a while, I finally had to back-up the files to an external drive, repartition and format the problem drive, then load the files back onto it.

Complete success, all symptoms fixed. But no thanks to Norton's worthless, ineffective product that is supposed to fix simple disk errors without having to blow away the partition and restore the data. By the way, after manually fixing the problem, NDD runs on the drive for about 20 minutes before it announces that it is healthy. When the file structure was broken, it only took 5 seconds before it lied like a dog. Very disappointing; Norton Disk Doctor does not live up to its hype.