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Norton Utilities

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Norton Utilities

Norton Utilities is a utility software suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain a computer. The latest version of the original series of Norton Utilities is Norton Utilities 16 for Windows XP/Vista/7/8, released 26 October 2012.

Peter Norton published the first version for DOS, The Norton Utilities, Release 1, in 1982. Release 2 came out about a year later, subsequent to the first hard drives for the IBM PC line. Peter Norton's company was sold to Symantec (now known as Gen Digital) in 1990 and Peter Norton himself no longer has any connection to the brand or company.

The initial 1982 release supports DOS 1.x and features the UNERASE utility. This allows files to be undeleted by restoring the first letter of the directory entry (a workaround of the FAT file system used in DOS). The UNERASE utility was what launched NU on its path to success. Quoting Peter Norton, "Why did The Norton Utilities become such popular software? Well, industry wisdom has it that software becomes standard either by providing superior capabilities or by solving problems that were previously unsolvable. In 1982, when I sat down at my PC to write Unerase, I was solving a common problem to which there was no readily available solution."

14 programs are included, on three floppy disks, list price $80:

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. Following this release Norton became Utilities Editor of PC Magazine.

The executable files were compressed with Realia's Spacemaker.

This version, copyrighted 1984 but dated 21 January 1985, includes Beep, Directory Sort, Disk Test, File Attributes, File Find, File Size, Line Print, List Directories, Screen Attributes, System Information, Text Search, Time Mark, Volume Label, Wipe Disk and Wipe File.

This 1986 version adds the Quick UnErase (QU) and Unremove Directory (UD) programs.

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