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| Customer Reviews: | | Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 11 found the following review helpful:
 Typical Symantec Apr 10, 2006
By Marald
Wish I hadn't wasted my money. This product would not install at all. This is the last time I buy any Symantec product until they correct problems and have REAL SUPPORT other than their useless online "support". In the last 5 years it seems they have produced sub standard products and yet still keep raising their prices.
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Install Norton GoBack at your own risk Apr 25, 2006
By B. Massey
It was time to renew my Norton Internet Security Subscription for my home computer (Sony Vaio Pentium IV desktop). I had been getting these messages bugging me to do this for a few weeks (you don't want to do this until the last possible minute because Symantec restarts your subscription at the time you renew, not at the time your old subscription expires). My option for renewing to NIS 2006 alone was to allow Symantec to automatically rebill me every year. The only option which allowed a one-time renew included the addition of Norton Systemworks Basic Edition for an additional $10. I had used NSW before at work and it had been helpful. So I thought, "what the heck, for $10 more, why not download this too. BIG MISTAKE! The default is that NSW also installs a utility called Norton GoBack. Its purpose is to take an image of your hard drive so that you can "go back" to a point in time if your system crashes and recover the disk at that point. Unfortunately, GoBack (which Symantec apparently bought from another company and did not develop or obviously field-test in house)uses its own method of partitioning the hard drive that is not universally recognized by Windows. The automatic reboot froze up my computer with an error message reading cryptically "Load needed DLLs for kernel."
In over my head, I had to contact GeekSquad to come to my home to the tune of $150 or so. When they tried restarting the system from a boot disc, the operating system could detect no files on the C: drive, thanks to the reformatting by GoBack. The only option was to do a system restore, which got my computer back to the way I had purchased it 15 months ago. While I had backed up critical files elsewhere, I still had to spend hours re-installing software, getting updates, etc. Some of my kids' photos were lost for good. A re-install of NSW without GoBack (a custom install) seems to work fine.
In doing a subsequent web (and Amazon) search, it is clear that this is not an isolated problem. Many people have reported this issue and the lack of support for the issue at Symantec. Despite the fact that the problem has been known for several months, absolutely NOTHING is available about this issue on the Symantec website.
While some people have apparently installed GoBack without difficulty, this is potentially a disaster, since it is uncertain when this works and when it causes a total system crash. Anyone buying this product would be wise to back up every critical file (ideally store a recoverable image of their hard drive) before installing Norton GoBack.
This really requires a negative star option.
17 of 20 found the following review helpful:
Not for emergencies...and installer is broken Jan 22, 2006
By David M. Ng
One of our family computers stopped booting Windows XP. I bought Norton SystemWorks 2006 Basic Edition with the hope of bringing the computer back to life with Norton Disk Doctor. Unfortunately, the Basic Edition does not boot from the CD-ROM. In other words, you need to have a running Windows system before you can use the product. The Basic Edition is not a product for trying to get Windows running again. But neither is the regular version of Norton SystemWorks, that only adds virus protection. According to the online manuals, you have to go for the Norton SystemWorks Premier product before you get a bootable CD-ROM.
Additionally, when I tried to run the Basic Edition CD-ROM on another working Windows system, the program always ended up "Not Responding". This happened whether I tried to perform an installation, or run SystemWorks directly from the CD. I had to dig through the directory structure of the CD-ROM to execute any programs. I give this product one star because it cannot be used for emergencies and the installer does not work.
My solution was to burn a Knoppix CD-ROM. Knoppix is a version of Linux that fits on a single bootable CD, and runs from the CD. After booting from the Knoppix CD I was able to access the hard disk and recover my files by copying them to a USB drive (make sure you first right-click on the USB drive icon and select the "Actions" menu, and select "Change read/write mode" and make the drive writable).
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
BEWARE!!! Sep 23, 2006
By Christina M. Forbes
Had to reload my XP operating system after bad advice from Symantec/Norton tech support. If you want to know the complete story, please read on. Norton AntiVirus came installed on my PC. When subscription was up, I renewed. Installed Internet Security without a problem but had difficulty with SystemWorks. Tech support had me go into Start / Run / and type "reged" -- DO NOT DO IT. The program installed but I lost among other programs, my Microsoft Office (Outlook, Word, Excel, Access, and PowerPoint) and I could not reinstall it (Error 1919) because tech support had me change things in the Registry Editor. I had to reload my XP operating system. Luckily I had extended tech support coverage from Dell or this could have cost me big bucks, but I did loose all the emails I had in Outlook since I could not get into Outlook to export the information out before reloading the operating system. And of course I lost countless hours backing things up, etc. And the kicker was that Symantec/Norton tech support took no responsibility for what they had done. They blamed it on my computer, even though I had gone into Word while I was on the phone with their Tech Support, but could not access Word (and many other programs) after they "helped" me.
7 of 7 found the following review helpful:
Ripoff--disable ware Sep 01, 2006
By P. Landes
"Software Engineer"
Don't buy software you pay good money for only to have it disabled! If I had known this was going to be disabled prematurely, I would have never had bought it.
After getting an error message that the subscription was invalid, I call support and was told the software subscription was up despite the fact that I still 4+ months left on the subscription renewal.
All I asked for for was the entire year subscription I purchased 11/7/2005 and am able to use the product (System Works 2004) until that time. I think that's reasonable, legitimate and legal as there was no agreement that I would have purchased another product to have the registration time applied to the product.
While the software I bought was SystemWorks, I don't think the draconian software policy would differ across products.
Now the product is disabled and EVERY service is disabled as well. That means, no virus scan, no disk doctor--nothing.
See all 12 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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