Norton Utilities boosts Windows NT performance
Since the early days of MS-DOS, Symantec's Norton Utilities has remained a favorite of PC users and systems administrators. The good news is that Norton Utilities is now available for Windows NT 4.0. The better news is that today's Norton Utilities replaces its old command-line utilities and single-function programs with more advanced features--features only dreamed of in its DOS ancestor. Bearing the Designed For Microsoft BackOffice logo, Symantec's Norton Utilities 2.0 for Windows NT is fully integrated into the Windows environment.
Installing Norton Utilities is effortless. You insert the CD-ROM, and
(assuming you have the AutoPlay feature enabled) the installation program
automatically starts. You answer some simple questions, such as how you want the
software to install and whether you want components to start automatically when
your system starts, and the copy process begins. Once the program completes the
copy process, you must reboot. The programs take only 20MB of disk space, so a
complete installation takes less than a minute when you select all the default
options.
Norton Utilities for NT consists of six programs.
- Norton System Doctor monitors and alerts you to problems with your
system's key components.
- Norton Disk Doctor diagnoses and repairs common hard disk problems.
- Norton Speed Disk defragments your hard disk and improves its performance.
- Norton System Information provides an overview of your computer's guts.
- Norton Protection/UnErase aids in recovering lost or deleted files.
- Live Update regularly updates all the Norton components on your system
(over the Internet or through a telephone connection).
Ask the Doctor
Norton's core programs are Norton System Doctor and Norton Disk Doctor.
These programs help you manage your system's performance.
Norton System Doctor employs sensors to monitor your system. For instance,
they monitor the hard disk for viruses, fragmentation, and other problems.
System Doctor categorizes sensors
into six classifications: memory, disks, system, Internet/network,
performance, and information.
On startup, System Doctor opens a window displaying interactive charts and
indicators. You select which indicators to view interactively by clicking
Sensors on the Menu bar. Each sensor classification has four or more
subclassifications. Selecting a subclassification opens an additional chart to
monitor. Paging file is a subclassification of memory, for example, and
it monitors your paging file usage.
System Doctor alleviates problems by taking basic corrective action when it
detects a problem (as shown in Screen 1). For example, when it detects
that a disk is too fragmented, the software automatically runs Norton Speed
Disk.
If your CPU utilization exceeds a preset limit, System Doctor displays an
alarm on the console and displays information about corrective actions that you
can manually implement to alleviate the problem. While working, you can minimize
the System Doctor window and continue to monitor your system's performance in
the background.
The Disk Specialist
Just as System Doctor diagnoses CPU problems, Disk Doctor diagnoses and
repairs common hard disk problems. Running Disk Doctor checks the partition
table, file structure indexes, and security descriptors of all your hard disk's
files. When Disk Doctor encounters a problem, the software automatically repairs
it (if possible) and alerts you that corrective measures were necessary.
The software will also optionally perform a comprehensive surface test of
your hard disk to ensure that bad sectors aren't waiting to crash your system.
Running Disk Doctor on a regular basis helps correct minor problems before they
become major issues.
Speed Disk Paramedic
A system's performance problems stem from one of three sources--network
degradation, CPU-intensive applications, and I/O bottlenecks. Norton Utilities
makes your disk subsystems more efficient by monitoring these three areas, but
it automatically performs corrective actions only on the I/O bottlenecks.
Norton Speed Disk defragments the file system. (See Screen 2 for
an example of defragmenting.) It takes noncontiguous files and rearranges them
into one large, contiguous file. Because defragmentation reduces the movement of
your read/write heads, the disk's performance improves.
Norton Speed Disk performs several other simultaneous functions. While
defragmenting, you can compress your files with NTFS's built-in compression,
which lets your hard disk store more data. Compression results in only a small
decrease in performance when the system has to read and decompress the data to
provide it to a user program.
You can consolidate free space, or unused space, on your hard disk into one
large contiguous chunk. On an NT system, the NTFS file system leaves a small
amount of space after each file to allow for growth. This NTFS feature results
in megabytes of fragmented disk free space, which can severely reduce your
system's performance--especially if you have a full hard disk.