Norton Utilities 8: the ultimate toolkit for MS-DOS
Back in the MS-DOS era, with generally more upgradeable computers and with more varied parts, having a full system status with device information and detailed specifications was a thing. Plug and play was not yet invented and USB would remain a dream for at least another 5 years, so all users of all knowledge levels were required to know system details, sometimes even specific configurations. For example the IRQ lane or DMA value for devices connected to the computer is something nobody asks anymore. It might as well be that those values aren’t even used anymore and have turned into something else entirely. And nobody cares. And that’s a good thing.
But with older computers all this information was essential, and MS-DOS did certainly not lack software that would disclose it. Knowledge of such details was so pervasive, that even file managers used daily started to give it here and there. Of all of course, Norton Commander was king. With an easy and streamlined user interface, it was the top pick for file navigation and quick glances at system information. But Peter Norton had the future in his eyes. Besides being purchased by Symantec.
Around 1982, the first release of Norton Utilities saw the light of day. The software would bundle a few essential and universally needed tools under a common interface. With each iteration, more tools were added and better interface arrangements were explored, until reaching Symantec’s radar in 1990. Symantec bought all software by Peter Norton, including the Norton Utilities suite, and expanded publishing heavily, allowing it to finally reach my computer at version 6. Only a few extra tools were added up to version 8 after which it became a Windows 95 product.
Let’s explore this final MS-DOS version today, and appreciate the vastness and quality of the tools provided, all in a simple and unflashy text user interface!
The installation steps
By 1994 when Symantec Norton Utilities 8 was released, developers and companies already knew how to make things easy for their customers. And we can clearly see it above: the setup process starts with an informative list of actions that will be performed, and even offers two installation options:
Software companies already knew people were not interested in options. They paid for the product, they wanted to use the product. So the first and most selected option was the fully automated setup. Note the amount of disk space required: 10 MB. We will get back to this number at the end of the article, after exploring all the tools bundled in this awesome toolkit. If we select the Custom Install path, we would get a few extra configuration pages, allowing us to fine-tune what we want to install and where:
After picking the tools and selecting what we want to run automatically at each system start, we are off to copying files:
And because we decided to participate in every decision made by the setup program, at the end we are asked again how we want to change CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, the main configuration files that MS-DOS relies on with each boot:
At the end, the installer would offer to create a rescue disk for us, an option quite sensible for the times. Rescue disks would usually have software that helped users regain control over their failing computer. As we can see, it would save a copy of CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT, and some disk editing tools for manual and automatic repair:
Ok, let’s run it
The Norton Utilities 8 user interface not only listed all the tools available in a nicely categorized text interface, but it also provided the available extra parameters the tools could use. Note how the user interface seems to float over the command line, suggesting that Norton Utilities is not the actual application you want to use, but just a quick selection menu that let’s you browse, reconsider, and quit, without affecting your current workflow.
And this is exactly what the clients wanted. They were all busy editing their files and working that command line around the clock. These tools offered by Norton Utilities were not the destination. They were supposed to be fast commands that they would learn to perform from time to time. Such as the Diagnostic tool that offered complete system information:
And some quick tests to run in case the system started to behave poorly:
And of course, having such quick access to a suite of fast motherboard tests that anybody could run with three keystrokes is nice, but also highlights the state of hardware reliability in the nineties. Has anyone ran such tests this month? This year? No? Of course not. Hardware these days is way past the point where it needs constant checking to see if all voltages and operations are still correct. But to have a quick glance at the operational status of all system components was indeed a thing back then. Memory would corrupt randomly, and even worse, disks would suffer the same fate:
I think Norton Disk Doctor was the tool I used mostly out of the suite. It was so ubiquitous, the Norton Utilities 8 installer would offer to run it at boot. At each and every boot. And don’t get me wrong: it was super fast and it would make sure the disk is still in proper working order. And it could fix most common issues automatically. But still, to need to run it all the time does put the whole computer industry in perspective. Besides a quick and general disk check-up, Norton Disk Doctor could also take each and every disk block and test it for damage:
But wait: what kind of damage? Well sectors on magnetic disks are quite susceptible to corruption. Especially when the disks were several years old, formatted hundreds of times for various reasons, filled to the last byte and emptied back again, moved between computers, misconfigured, probably even dropped or hit with hammers or screwdrivers. Such was the fate of a typical hard disk drive back then. Operating systems with rudimentary file systems were not helping either. No journaling meant write errors would creep in now and then. Norton Disk Doctor was there to make it all better. And if it couldn’t fix everything automatically, Symantec had the next level stuff for it:
Norton Disk Editor was the next step in disk damage recovery. It could edit files at hex code level, capturing and fixing minute corruptions in any file. It could open unreadable disks too, allowing one final attempt at recovery:
We can see how most recovery tools were for files. But not all damage was done at sector or byte level. Common software applications bugs were also inflicting user terror. As much as Symantec offered a dedicated File Fix tool for typical problems that applications such as Excel or dBase would face:
I don’t even know what “UnZap” dBase files means, but since it warranted a dedicated option in the File Fix tool, it means that it was common, and it was bad. But take a look at the Image tool description:
Formatting a disk was such a common operation, that it was even a joke among users if they formatted their drive this month. The fact that it took a simple command to do it didn’t help either. Of course, formatting always was an irreversible operation, and so was losing files because of it. The fix? Norton Image. It would create a snapshot file which could be used to fix an otherwise unfixable problem. The snapshot could be used by the Norton UnFormat tool we can see in the tool list of the screenshot above. Smart.
Another smart tool was the INI tracker. MS-DOS applications kept all their settings in INI files. They were a thing in the eighties until Microsoft called it and dropped them in favor of the Windows system registry. And because all those configuration files could be easily deleted or corrupted, Symantec offered the helpful INI Tracker tool to save and restore them if needed. On the same note worked the SmartCan tool, which worked like the present day recycle bin:
SmartCan would run in the background, keeping track of all deleted files on the disk, essentially replacing the delete command with a rename and hide command to keep them without letting the user notice. And since the Symantec developers were professionals, they also offered smart features for the power users:
As Norton Image worked together with Norton UnFormat, so would Norton SmartCan work with Norton UnErase. The tool would show all the detected deleted files and offer to view or recover them with a press of a button:
We can see how the magic is uncovered in the screenshot above. The files were never deleted. Their name was changed to allow tracking and force MS-DOS to consider them inexistent.
But wait, there’s more
But the user’s troubles were not all about corrupted files and damaged hard drives. There were other vicious foes around running rampant: viruses. As with most viruses, all they wanted to do was ruin data. So here comes the awesome Norton Utilities with just the right tool: Disk Monitor. It was not just for monitoring, it also offered to protect files as well:
Disk monitor also offered another obsolete feature by today’s standards: disk parking. Meaning it would physically command the disk drives to move their heads to the side of the disk before powering down the system, so that in case of a computer drop, or hammer kick, the drive head would not scratch important information on the disk. Now that’s retro:
And if restoring and safeguarding data was not for you, Norton Utilities 8 also offered a wipe tool, which could irrecoverably destroy files or entire contents of any disk:
Some performance improvements
Norton Utilities also offered some performance calibration tools, again for the disk drives, the first of which being called Norton Calibrate:
Generally it would work like a defragmentation tool, moving data to better location so it would be readily available. It would also offer configuration improvements to detected hard drives so they would operate quicker. But the disclaimer was also daunting:
It would also analyze the drive before marching to improve its speed with operations that could cause irreversible damage:
In the end it would all boil down to the usual defragmentation and disk scanning interface all Norton tools seemed to share:
If calibration was not your thing, defragmentation surely was, all because of the FAT file system that required it periodically. No bother: Speed Disk to the rescue:
A weird tool was Norton CD. Not as in Compact Disk, but as in MS-DOS cd command, change directory. It offered a graphical way of moving between directories:
Last but not least, Norton System Information. Because this is where it all started, and this is all we wanted in the first place. But after you got all your system information, more than you could ask for, why not go through all the other tools and fix your system forever? I am only being a bit sarcastic because if you haven’t counted by now, Symantec offered all the recovery, diagnostic and information tools you could ever wish for in 10 MB of data.
Yes, 10 MB. With a nice text user interface which you couldn’t blame for anything. It was fast, it supported a mouse but didn’t really need it because all key presses were extremely well optimized and thought out. It was like the fewer options interface designers had, the better solutions they came up with. Not only the interface was looking good and featured similar steps and visualizations for similar use cases from different tools, but it was also fast and took little code to make it work:
And that’s it. Thank you for joining me on this nostalgia journey. I know I used Norton Utilities a lot back then. Each and every tool was carefully and methodically considered, applied and configured. Having write protection and file recovery options was like a revelation. Of course, Symantec moved on and became the security behemoth of our times, forgetting about their initial humble but bold beginnings. The Norton Utilities suite moved on to Windows, where after a few versions it started to fade into obsolescence.
Microsoft started offering automatic defragmentation in Windows XP, and automatic disk checks on the better NTFS file system, so all those tools that were once needed became useless. And so did Norton Utilities. But while it lasted, Peter Norton and Symantec showed they can keep a wild system plagued by accidental corruption and misconfiguration safely in check. And all users of those times felt it. Thank you again for reading and see you next time!
