There are some programs you buy to do a specific job in your daily work. There are some you buy to have fun. There are some you buy to make your PC work better. And there are some that might just save your rear end some day. The Norton Utilities definitely fall into the latter two categories; they've been around for donkey's years (or so it would seem), and in more recent times have also been offered as part of Norton SystemWorks. Symantec has been good about updating SystemWorks for newer versions of Windows, and SystemWorks 2002 is their release for Windows XP, though the same package works with Windows 98, Windows Me or with Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 (though not with server versions).

The most famous component of SystemWorks is The Norton Utilities, which have evolved over the years and now include some very useful capabilities for taking care of a Windows system. One of the old favorites is Norton Disk Doctor, which has a lot of tricks up its sleeve for hunting down errors on your drives, both fixed and removable, generally doing a more thorough job than Windows' own ScanDisk. Speed Disk rearranges files on your hard disks to speed up loading and access, and does so with greater flexibility than Microsoft's Disk Defragmenter. The Norton Protected Recycle Bin and Unerase Wizard help protect files that might accidentally be deleted; on the other hand, if you really, truly want to get rid of certain files, Wipe Info will erase all traces of them from the disk (though the Windows 2000/XP version won't wipe unused areas of your drive).

One of my newer favorites in Norton Utilities is WinDoctor; this does an amazing job of fixing many types of registry errors as well as bad shortcuts and missing system files, and will often restore a balky PC to the peak of health.  I did find that it should be used with some caution; one system we tried it on somehow was restored to some very old settings (probably from an old copy of the registry) that caused some rather unnerving problems of their own. I'd advise making a backup of the registry before running WinDoctor just in case (you can use System Restore if you have Windows Me or XP, or use GoBack as described below). There are also the System Information utility (though it no longer does processor benchmarks), and on Windows 98 and Me systems several other old power-user favorites, including the Disk Editor and System Diagnostics, are still available as well as a DOS mode version of Disk Doctor.

Aside from system maintenance, the big concern of PC users today is viruses, and Symantec's Norton AntiVirus is one of the big two AV programs, and good enough for just about anybody as far as I'm concerned. In addition to the usual tasks of periodically scanning all files (or a selected group) and automatically scanning each file as it's accessed, NAV will block malicious scripts from being executed, for example in Microsoft Office applications (so the "script kiddies" won't have their fun at your expense), and will also scan incoming email (and outgoing if you like) for viruses ֪– a very useful feature by itself, judging by the number of hits I've gotten while testing the program! A virus scanner is only as good as its database of viruses, and NAV updates its definitions automatically if you prefer (as well as using LiveUpdate to download program patches). Updates are free of charge for the first year with the retail version, and annual subscriptions for virus definitions are available after that.

Norton Utilities and Norton AntiVirus are still available as separate packages, but the best value is in the SystemWorks package. In addition to NU and NAV, SystemWorks 2002 includes CleanSweep, to clean up the detritus left behind after heavy PC usage (also available separately), and GoBack 3 Personal Edition (from Roxio, makers of Easy CD Creator) to let you restore your system after crashes or software installation failures. (This is much the same as the System Restore feature in Windows Me or XP, so it's especially useful for Windows 98 or 2000.) The Professional Edition adds Norton Ghost, a utility to clone hard drives (say from one system to another), and WinFax Basic, the "light" version of a full-featured fax program. Whichever you choose, Norton SystemWorks is something I'd install before you install anything else.

 http://www.symantec.com

– Ed Ellers