Norton, acquired by Symantec in 1990 is one of the leading names in the software sector, and Norton Utilities is yet another innovative and powerful addition to the company’s lineup of products, and is designed to speed up your PC for optimal performance.
Your Window’s registry tends to get fragmented over time as new programs and apps are installed. In fact, every operation that occurs on a PC system adds or removes information from the registry.
Even though most of the unwanted entries are removed automatically from the registry when not required, there’s a lot of information that gets left behind causing it to bloat, consequently fragmenting and damaging the registry files.
Most of the latest versions of Windows do come with a defragmentation and optimization tool, but it lacks key features, and in most cases, doesn’t deliver the same performance as third-party software such as Norton Utilities.
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Norton Utilities Review
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Norton Utilities is regarded as an all-rounder in the PC tune-up sector for several reasons, most notably because it doesn’t just repair invalid registry entries, but also removes nonessential programs from the startup process, and frees hard drive space.
It features a clean, easy-to-navigate interface that’s divided into five areas – Dashboard, Performance, Privacy, Recovery and Settings. The Dashboard section displays the startup time for third-party software, free hard drive space, system health and a large one-click optimization icon.
Moving over to the Performance tab provides you with access to run individual tools such as Clean Your Registry, and Defragment Disks. The Privacy tab is where you would go to clear your digital tracks including shredding files, clearing browsing history and other functions.
The Recovery section lets you perform five actions including Restore Registry Backups and Recover Lost Files, and the settings area just as the name suggests allows you to tweak the options for almost all the aforementioned functions and features.
Most of these solid functions and features can be found in just about any PC optimizer software, but their performance is unmatched by Norton Utilities. For example, you can scrub your browser history, recover deleted files and permanently delete others, and run other tools without any hiccups.
Another feature that gives Norton Utilities an edge over its competition is its third-party app startup time measurer, which when triggered displays the impact of the apps you have set to run on startup.
But that’s not all – the real-time system monitoring function of Norton Utilities keeps an eye on files to help clean your system more effectively. And in case you accidentally delete files, the software restores them to homecourt in just a couple clicks.
Apart from saying goodbye to Windows registry issues that can take a toll on your system’s performance – error messages or causing system to crash, Norton Utilities’ registry defragmenter function removes free space and gaps, and corrupt files, and its registry restore function creates a backup before you make any changes, so that you can easily undo them if needed.
Duplicate File Finder is a new feature in Norton Utilities, and allows users to free up computer space by locating all the duplicate files scattered across the hard drive and automatically remove them. Application uninstaller is another great feature of Norton Utilities, and when triggered removes programs that aren’t used or ones that take up too many system resources.
Who is This Product For?
Unlike similar software in the PC tune-up segment, Norton Utilities supports PC’s running all the latest versions of Windows OS i.e. Windows 10, 8, and 7, and 32-bit Windows XP (with Service Pack 3), making it a great choice for old and new PC’s.
On the downside, Norton Utilities doesn’t offer a demo version to try before you buy, but on a brighter note it isn’t a subscription-based product, so you don’t have re-up on an annual basis. Adding to this, it can be used on three PC’s at the same time, and measurably enhances a PC’s performance.
Overview of Features
Norton Utilities is one of the few PC performance booster applications that comes with an extensive list of features including:
Enhances PC performance
The software detects and fixes common PC issues, accelerates PC startup time, program and system speed, and frees up memory.
Restore files
One of the key features of this program is its ability to restore mistakenly deleted files.
File types
It can help recover several different types of files including photos, music files and more, and can even securely delete sensitive files.
Speed disk
This feature defragments and optimizes files and data locates across your hard drive.
Startup manager
To help speed up startup times, users can select the programs they’d like to run at startup.
Disk cleaner
Apart from optimizing your PC, Norton Utilities also permanently erases all instances of your computer and web activities to protect your privacy.
System requirements
Compatible with several Windows OS, 100 MB of available hard disk space, SVGA (1024 x 768) video and requires a minimum of 64 MB RAM.
Speed disk
Defragments and optimizes files and data on your hard drive
Alternatives
Norton Utilities is a feature-rich PC tune-up software that comes with an expansive list of features. But even though it is compatible with the latest Windows 10, it lacks a few Windows 10 specific features such as disabling data collecting from within the app, and a driver updated,
However, if you like what you hear about Norton Utilities and prefer to use it for PC tune-up tasks, you can always download IOBit Driver Booster Proto keep your drivers up to date.
Conclusion
If your PC’s performance is not up to the mark, Norton Utilities is a PC tune-up and optimizer software you really can’t go wrong with. It is designed to do a great job at de-gunking your PC, comes with several useful features including application uninstaller, speed disk, disk doctor, startup manager, registry defragmenter, and can be used on three separate PCs at the same time, with just one lifetime subscription.
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