NORTON UTILITIES DISK DOCTOR SOFTWARE

NortonвЂ™s version gives you great control over the process and is especially nice on computers equipped with more than one size of floppy disk drive, 5 1/4 and 3 1/2-inch models, for instance. Safe Format is the name of a new utility in the standard and advanced editions that is a much welcome alternative to the DOS command for formatting a new disk so that it can store programs and data. You donвЂ™t need a disaster to find the utilities valuable, however. Written clearly and simply, the book makes it easy for anyone, regardless of how little they know about how their computer works, to diagnose problems when it doesnвЂ™t work right. The result was a perfectly usable disk.ДЄlong with the Disk Doctor, the advanced edition comes with an excellent book called the Norton Trouble Shooter. Then he ran Disk Doctor, which quickly found all the problems, reported them on the screen and then repaired them. First, he destroyed the boot track and file allocation table data (using another feature of the utilities that allows any portion of a disk to be changed). Kraig Lane, NortonвЂ™s product manager for the utilities, gave me a very convincing demonstration of Disk DoctorвЂ™s abilities. A bug in one of your programs might cause such a problem, or even turning off your computer before you exit a program could do it. If they are wrong, it has the ability to rebuild them into their proper form, making a disk usable again. The Disk Doctor knows how those two portions of a disk should read. Another necessary component is the file allocation table, which is like the table of contents in a book. One such requirement is the вЂњboot track,вЂќ which gets the computer off to the right start as it begins to use that disk. NortonвЂ™s Disk Doctor does not fix hardware problems, although the errors it finds might result from hardware failures.Д®very disk must have certain information in the right place before the computer can use the disk. In my column two weeks ago, I described three programs that can find and repair hardware failures in hard disks. It includes a program called the Norton Disk Doctor, which does an amazing job of fixing program glitches and user errors that can render a floppy or hard disk useless. The advanced edition is worth the extra cost. NortonвЂ™s latest baton waving has brought forth Norton Utilities, version 4.5, which comes in a standard edition for $100 and in an advanced edition for $150. Instead, he hires younger, вЂњsmarterвЂќ programmers and compares his role as chairman of the board and chief executive of Norton Computing to that of Toscanini directing an orchestra with the wave of a baton. In fact, at age 45, Norton no longer writes program updates himself, saying he is вЂњtoo oldвЂќ to be good at it. Sales of the utilities over the years have made Norton so rich that these days he gets as much attention for his art collecting as for his computer programming.

NORTON UTILITIES DISK DOCTOR SOFTWARE

Anyone with a hard disk should consider the utilities as must-have software because sooner or later they will be needed. Virtually anybody who owns an IBM or compatible computer can use the newest Norton Utilities. But the latest release is the easiest to use and the most powerful. In the early days of the Norton Utilities, you had to be fairly technically inclined to get the most out of them. One often-cited utility is System Information, which compares the speeds of various models of IBM and compatible personal computers. Others do more complicated chores, such as controlling the colors you see on the screen of a color monitor or even diagnosing whether there are problems with your disk drives. Some of the other Norton Utility programs help you manage your computer by performing fairly routine tasks, such as finding files or displaying a list of your files sorted in a particular way.

Norton utilities disk doctor