Well, industry wisdom has it that software becomes standard either by providing superior capabilities or by solving problems that were previously unsolvable.

"[1] 14 programs are included, on three floppy disks, list price $80:[2][3] The main feature of this DOS 2.x compatible version is FILEFIND, used for searching for files.

[citation needed] This 1983 release adds hard disk support, and the PRINT program was renamed LPRINT to avoid conflict with the DOS command introduced in MS-DOS 2.0 as PRINT.COM.

It includes Windows Program Manager support, but the tools are still DOS-based, so a set of icons were supplied.

UnErase takes advantage of DOS 5.0's Delete Tracking and Mirror File features to recover data.

[11] However, MS-DOS 5.0 adds a new UNDELETE.exe program, licensed from Norton competitor Central Point Software,[12] which takes advantage of the same Delete Sentry control and Deletion-tracking files.

DOS Utilities include Norton Disk Doctor, System Information, Change Directory, FileFind, Diskreet, DUPDISK, File Fix, NDOS, Batch Enhancer, Norton Integrator, Speed Disk.

Changes in the way Windows operates meant that many of the old utilities were either dropped completely or replaced with GUI based versions.

However, with the advent of Windows XP onwards, Norton's Speed Disk reverted to single-cluster defragmentation.

[22] Originally called Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows NT during prerelease,[23] it was announced on 27 January 1997.

It does not include DOS UnErase, so files deleted from FAT partition needs to be handled by Norton Utilities for Windows 95/98.

Via the use of LiveUpdate, a Speed Disk patch is available to take advantage of Windows 98's application launch enhancements.

[27] Symantec announced it had sponsored a bug-a-thon between USC and UCLA during the final development stages of the latest product release of Norton Utilities 3.0.

Marketed as Norton Utilities 2000, this is the final version to run solely on the original Windows 95 platform.

It includes Registry Defragmenter, Registry Cleaners, Disk Cleaner, Disk Defragmenter, Startup Manager, Service Manager, Restore Center, System Optimizer, Process Viewer, and Performance Test.

PC Pro rated Norton Utilities 14 with 1 star (out of 6) for "an overpriced collection of optimization tools that falls far short of its promise.

[36] IT Reviews called the package "light on features compared to rivals" and it questioned the "usefulness of some of the monitoring utilities.

New features include Duplicate File Finder, System Dashboard, Application Uninstaller, Windows 8 Compatibility.

When Apple released System 7, Norton Utilities for the Macintosh needed to be updated in order to run safely.

Released in October 1995, v3.2 adds support for volumes larger than 4 GB, up to 2 TB to match System 7.5.2 disk size limit.

It includes Wipe Info, Speed Disk, Volume Recover, Norton FileSaver, UnErase, LiveUpdate.

[51] 8.0.2 adds support of G5 model Macintosh released before December 2004, 1.25 GHz eMac, and various Mac G4 notebooks.

One review mentioned that it is easy to make use of most of SUM II's utilities, but at the same time, the file recovery functionality in SUM II is less automated and required more manual configuration compared to the file recovery functionality in Norton Utilities.

[68] That year Jerry Pournelle said regarding 4.5, "I'm already on record as saying that everyone needs the Norton Utilities ... [4.5] is a major upgrade, and worth getting.

[69] Darian Graham-Smith of PC Pro gave Norton Utilities 14 an overall rating of 2 of 6 stars.

If your system isn't running as fast as you think it should, uninstalling unnecessary software and pruning background applications using Windows' own tools or downloadable freebies are a more cost-effective first defense.

They concluded, "Norton Utilities did a satisfactory job of de-gunking and increasing the overall performance of our test laptop, but it doesn't stack up well against rival suite System Mechanic 11".

A hacker known as "Yama Tough" obtained Symantec's source code by hacking an Indian Government server.

[75] On 25 September 2012, eight months after the first hack, an affiliate of the hacker group "Anonymous" published the source code for Norton Utilities.

He claimed proof in that random numbers he generated for BIOS compatibility checks were left unchanged in Disk Doctor, presumably because Norton's software engineers didn't know their purpose.