No more Norton System Works for Tiger users...

J

JohNYC

Registered
Hi all,

I'm new around here so please pardon me if this question was already addressed.

I just upgraded my eMac 1GHz to OS 10.4. So far most of my apps are running fine. But, each time I would start up, Norton AntiVirus would give me an error message. So, I tried to reinstall AV, which came as a part of SystemWorks 3. No dice.

So, I went to the Symantec site to discover that they will no longer support SystemWorks or Utilities for OS 10.4 and higher. Instead, they will only concentrate on Internet Security and AntiVirus in the future for Macs.

I'm a bit p'd off about the whole thing, given that I just reupped my virus definitions subscription last month and I'm going to have to get their latest AV program.

Anyhow, I'm not going to rant too much.

I like to maintain my hard drives with DiskDoctor and SpeedDisk, both of which are not supported anymore by Symantec. Can anyone recommend an app that performs the same functions?

Thanks in advance,
John
 
As of late, Norton/Symantec hasn't played nicely with OS X at all. You'll find people telling you to stay away from Norton Utilities. There are lots of other vendors that properly cater to Mac users, and some of those developers are open source developers. I haven't tried ClamXav, but I hear that it's pretty good for a free antivirus.

As for drive utilities, people here highly recommend DiskWarrior. OnyX is also a good program for cleaning up those pesky .plist files once you've gotten rid of certain apps, and it also does a few other things as well.
 
Norton Utilities didnt't play nice with my Tiger. My first kernel panic. Good times. Got rid of it immediately. They should focus on AV leave it at that. It's what they are goot at.
 
JohNYC said:
Hi all,

I like to maintain my hard drives with DiskDoctor and SpeedDisk, both of which are not supported anymore by Symantec. Can anyone recommend an app that performs the same functions?

Thanks in advance,
John
Click to expand...

I read an article in the Apple Knowledge base (can't remember the title) to the effect that with today's large drives with (usually) lots of free space it is no longer adviseable to defragment and optimize hard drives, which also causes wear and tear on the drive from extensive activity during the defragmentation and optomization. In short, forget about Speed Disk or equivalent.

I've also read that DiskWarrior is superior to DiskDoctor, and that the latter may actually do some damage, though I've never experienced any. I recently purchased the former but have not used it enough to comment from personal experience.
 
[size=+3]Hands-off of Norton SystemWorks![/size]

Norton's system utilities - whatever they were called in the past and present - are known to do damage to Macintosh installations. Do not use them. If they're installed already, get rid of them immediately.

If you have to (only if urged to do so by your network admin), do install Norton Antivirus. But nothing else. If you need an alternative to it, use clamxav - it's free.
 
nixgeek said:
OnyX is also a good program for cleaning up those pesky .plist files once you've gotten rid of certain apps...
Click to expand...
How do you use Onyx to do this? I don't really have any use for it, but I was curious, so I installed it to check out this feature...only...I can't seem to find it.
 
plist files are your Preference files. Onux doesn't clean or remove these files.
 
Hi all,

Thanks to everyone for all the useful information. I've been using Norton Utilities for years, and I've NEVER experienced any problems. I guess I was lucky. :)

As for NOT de-fragging hard drives, I've never heard or read about that. Can anyone else respond to this?

Finally, I will check out DiskWarrior. If it's better than NU, and I've always liked using NU, then I should be happy, right :)!!!

Happy holidays all,
John
 
As for NOT de-fragging hard drives, I've never heard or read about that. Can anyone else respond to this?
Click to expand...

"Disk optimization is a process in which the physical locations of files on a volume are "streamlined." Files and metadata are re-arranged in order to improve data access times and minimize time moving a hard drive's head.

"Files can become "fragmented" over time as they are changed and saved and as the volume is filled, with different parts of a single file stored in different locations on a volume. The process of collecting file fragments and putting them "back together" is known as optimization. However, if a failure occurs during optimization, such as power loss, files could become damaged and need to be restored from a backup copy."

However:

"You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X. Here's why:

° Hard disk capacity is generally much greater now than a few years ago. With more free space available, the file system doesn't need to fill up every "nook and cranny." Mac OS Extended formatting (HFS Plus) avoids reusing space from deleted files as much as possible, to avoid prematurely filling small areas of recently-freed space.

° Mac OS X 10.2 and later includes delayed allocation for Mac OS X Extended-formatted volumes. This allows a number of small allocations to be combined into a single large allocation in one area of the disk.

° Fragmentation was often caused by continually appending data to existing files, especially with resource forks. With faster hard drives and better caching, as well as the new application packaging format, many applications simply rewrite the entire file each time. Mac OS X 10.3 Panther can also automatically defragment such slow-growing files. This process is sometimes known as "Hot-File-Adaptive-Clustering."

° Aggressive read-ahead and write-behind caching means that minor fragmentation has less effect on perceived system performance.

"For these reasons, there is little benefit to defragmenting.

"Mac OS X systems have hundreds of thousands of small files, most of which are rarely accessed. Optimizing them is a major effort for very little practical gain. There is also the a chance that one of the files placed in the "hot band" for rapid reads during system startup might be moved during defragmentation, which would actually decrease performance.

"If you think you might need to defragment, try restarting first."


You can check it out at:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25668
 
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