nt 

n

ntAs a convenience, the Norton Utilities Advanced Edition came with both 5.25u201d and 3.5u201d floppy disks. Unfortunately, I long ago misplaced the 5.25u201d disks.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntInside the Advanced Edition were three manuals: a standard user manual, the Norton Trouble Shooter, and the Norton Disk Companion. The 158-page Norton Trouble Shooter, pictured here, was a very detailed guide for using the utilities to solve disk problems. The Norton Disk Companion discussed the inner workings of both floppy and hard disks.

n

ntAs you can see, the cover of the Norton Trouble Shooter showed Peter Norton dressed as a mechanic with a floppy disk on the lift.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntBack in those days, computer users were more reactive than proactive, so it was common that you wouldn’t buy the Norton Utilities until you already had a problem. The first screen in the installation warned you about installing the Norton utilities on the disk with the problem and suggested that you run the utilities from the floppy disk.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntBefore it began working, the installation program displayed a screen that told you exactly what was going to occur.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntOnce the installation was complete, you saw the Help screen

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe 4.5 version of the Norton Utilities Advanced Edition sported a new user interface called the Norton Integrator that provided a scrolling menu that made it easy to see and launch all of the included programs. Each menu selection was accompanied with detailed instructions on the selected utility. The UI featured pop-up windows and dialog boxes with great colors and smooth transitions. This was pretty revolutionary stuff back in the DOS days!

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Batch Enhancer was a utility that allowed you to enhance batch files with user interface features such as colors, frames, menus, as well as more complex decision logic.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThis is a simple menu created with the Window, Rowcol, and Ask commands.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Disk Information utility was a great tool for learning more about your hard and floppy disks.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThis screen shows information about the hard disk. As you can see, the default DOS color scheme, grey on black, was kind of drab.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntFortunately, one of the features of the Batch Enhancer was the Screen Attributes (SA) command that would allow you to easily change the screen to something more appealing with the command BE SA Bright White On Blue.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntWhen all you had to work with was the DIR command, having a utility like Directory Sort was a real Godsend.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntDirectory Sort worked inside the Norton Integrator interface.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntDisk Test was designed to help you detect possible problems before they threatened your data.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntDisk Test would take a few minutes to check out your disk and then display the results.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntFile Attributes were difficult to manage with the DOS ATTRIB command, but running the File Attributes utility from within the Norton Integrator made the task easy.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntHere the File Attributes command shows that the Archive bit set for each of the files in the Norton directory.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntAs you know, programmers often make the date and time of all the files the same. For example, all the files in the Norton Utilities 4.5 were set to the date 1-03-89 and time 4.50. With the File Date/Time utility, you could change the file and date stamp on your files to whatever you wanted.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntWhen all you had to look at your files was the DIR command, it was easy to overlook the one file you were looking for. With the File Find command, finding lost files was a snap.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntToday, we take long filenames for granted. Back when all you had to work with were 8 characters, a utility like File Info, which allowed you to attach long descriptive comments to your files, made keeping track of your files

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntOf course, the only way to view the long descriptions was with the File Info utility itself.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntIf you inadvertently formatted a hard disk that contained valuable data, Format Recover could be used to undo the format and recover your data.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntCopying files to floppy disks was a very common task back in the DOS days and the File Size utility was a big help in that its primary benefit was determining if a selected group of files would be able to fit on the target disk.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntLike the Directory Sort utility, the List Directories was really a handy tool to have at your disposal.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntAs you can see, the graphic display mode of List Directories created a nice image of your directory structure.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntPrinting text documents, such as the obligatory Read.Me files of the day, was a quick operation with the Line Print utility.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Norton Control Center was great for setting up system hardware.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntIf you launched Norton Control Center without parameters, you could pick the items you wanted to configure from the menu on the left. In this example, you could set screen color using the arrow keys to move the pointer to the color you wanted to use.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Norton Change Directory utility allowed you to change directories without having to specify the whole path name. This utility would scan your directory structure into memory so would know where you wanted to go when you specified only part of the name. The utility also allowed you to easily create and rename directories.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Norton Change Directory utility also had a graphical display that you could navigate with your arrow keys.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe Disk Doctor was at the heart of the Norton Utilities and could diagnose and repair just about every possible problem from bad partition tables and boot records to mangled root directories. In addition, it could reformat bad sectors and then write the data back into place.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntAlongside the Disk Doctor, the namesake Norton Utility was basically the surgeon. With this utility you could delve deep down into the magnetic bowels of a disk and edit any part of the disk to recover lost data and make minute repairs.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntAlongside the Disk Doctor, the namesake Norton Utility was basically the surgeon. With this utility you could delve deep down into the magnetic bowels of a disk and edit any part of the disk to recover lost data and make minute repairs.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe UnErase portion of the Norton Utility was legendary for its ability to bring back data from the long dead.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntIf you accidentally deleted a file and then immediately realized your mistake, you would use the Quick UnErase utility to quickly rectify the problem.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntWhen it was first recognized that disk fragmentation could be a problem, Speed Disk was one of the first disk defragmenters on the scene.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntWith its nice graphical display, you could actually watch the process unfold right before your eyes on the scene. I can remember spending lots of time defragmenting drives just to watch the display.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntSafe Format was a replacement for the DOS format command and provided a disk recovery features. If a disk that was formatted contained data, Safe Format would save information about the data that could be later used to unformat the disk.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntSystem Information basically tested the performance of your system and rated in according to three indexes: the Computing Index, the Disk Index and the combined Performance Index.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntInformation about the system displayed at the top, information about memory in the middle and the indexes at the bottom.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntTime Mark was a great computerized stop watch.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntFinding strings of text in files was simple with the Text Search utility.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe UnRemove Directory utility was like the long lost brother to the very popular UnErase utility. It would allow you to bring back a directory that had been removed/deleted along with any files that it contained.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntVolume Label simply allowed you to add, edit, or remove the volume name assigned to a disk.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntThe WipeDisk utility was designed to make the data on the disk unrecoverable. At that time, Wipe File used the latest U.S. Government DOD standard for ensuring that the contents of the file were unrecoverable.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntWipeFile worked similarly to WipeDisk, just on a file level. It also used the latest U.S. Government DOD standard for ensuring that the contents of the file were unrecoverable.

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.

nt 

n

ntLearn more about the Norton Utilities

n

ntImage created by Greg Shultz for TechRepublic.