The original PC Tools package was first developed as a suite of utilities for DOS, released for retail in 1985 for $39.95.

It was widely considered to have been rushed to publication, despite the objections of many of Central Point Software's employees.

The package MORE PC Tools was released by Symantec's Central Point Division in October 1994[2] and included additional utilities: Backtrack, CrashGuard Pro (ex-Central Point Recuperator), DriveCheck, DriveSpeed.

[5] The Mirror, Undelete, and Unformat utilities were licensed by Central Point to Microsoft for inclusion in MS-DOS 5.0.

Central Point Anti-Virus and VDefend were licensed as Microsoft AntiVirus and VSafe, respectively, in MS-DOS 6.0 through 6.22.