Ontrack Systemsuite 2000

Installation took only a few minutes (including a system reboot), and we suddenly had an antivirus program, several hard drive utilities, system recovery software, an uninstaller, a powerful file compression package, and several other utilities at our disposal. All the tools are accessible from a slick, integrated interface that includes several quick-access menus and controls for novices. Advanced users can dig a little deeper into the software to configure advanced options.

The antivirus software, VirusScanner 2000, comes with one year of free virus definitions updates and is simple to configure. EasyUninstall 2000 is an application that tracks programs as they are installed so it can completely remove all traces of the software should you want to uninstall it. It also has advanced capabilities like the ability to move programs to different drives and folders, or compressing installed programs so they take up less space but retain all the customized settings you established when the software is decompressed and reinstalled.

The real core of this package is the hard drive utility suite, Fix-It Utilities 2000. In addition to a program that will quickly defragment and optimize your hard drive (it worked faster in ours tests than the disk defragmenter that comes with Windows 98) you receive all manner of disaster recovery tools. The software comes with an emergency boot diskette that can be updated as much as you like so the system can be accessed and restored when major trouble strikes. Other tools optimize the Windows registry and fix hard drive errors that could lead to serious trouble if left alone. We purposely caused our test PC to fail several times and never had any trouble restoring it as long as we stuck to the directions given in the thick printed manuals that round out this powerful yet easy-to-use package. --T. Byrl Baker