 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Network Associates: Safe & Sound Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au |
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Diagnostic and repair tools are these days almost as rife as politician's promises. Now, Network Associates has just made the competition a little more intense with its release of Safe & Sound (S&S). S&S is a utilities suite covering three principal roles--preventing system problems, fixing them when they occur, and protecting your data from harm.
Most of the S&S utilities aren't new, having been previously released as part of other packages from the McAfee/Helix Software (now Network Associates) stable. Nuts & Bolts, for instance, and Hurricane 98 both include several utilities in common with S&S. S&S doesn't supersede these programs; it just offers a different mix of utilities.
PC Checkup
PC Checkup is S&S's diagnostic and repair utility. It checks out hardware, trawls through software and files, assesses your PC's configuration, and--if you're lucky--fixes the problems it finds. Checkup is very customisable; you decide which aspects of your system to test, what tests to run, and to what level of detail. At the end of each diagnostic run, Checkup reports its findings and offers to fix the problems automatically, or walk you through the steps of doing so yourself. If you wish, you can elect to ignore the problem for now. Unfortunately, Checkup offers no manual override to prevent "problems" that aren't really problems from being re-detected in the future. It repeatedly tags application files normally stored on CD-ROM, for instance, as "missing files" after each and every checkup.
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Retake
Retake automatically backs up your data into a protected volume file on your hard disk at time intervals
which you nominate. If you wish, it will even back up in synchronisation with your changes to the original
files. Retake works transparently; configured to update my backup during idle times, I noticed no performance
degradation on my PC.
McAfee Image
Unlike Retake, which only backs up files, Image takes a copy of your computer's boot record, partition tables
and FAT (File Allocation Table), and enables you to restore these if your hard disk fails. With Retake
backing up your data regularly, and Image updating each time you start Windows, you'll have a much stronger
chance of completely restoring your PC to its pre-crash state.
Bomb Shelter
Bomb Shelter enables you to exit gracefully from application and system crashes, and even recover without
loss of data. It does this by monitoring critical regions of RAM and intervening whenever an application
tries to over-write these regions. Then, Bomb Shelter displays a modified Close Program dialogue box that
also offers you the option of recovering a faulty application. If you choose to recover, you can re-enter the
application and save your data. I tested Bomb Shelter on its own, but according to the documentation, it can
coexist with other protection programs. The documentation claims it catches only errors that these programs
miss, because it operates at a lower level than other programs.
Year 2000 compliance checker
The Year 2000 Checker tests your PC's RTC (Real Time Clock), BIOS, DOS and Windows clocks to determine
whether they handle Year 2000 dates correctly. If Checker finds a problem, it installs a fixer program,
adding it to your AUTOEXEC.BAT file so it runs every time you boot your PC. Checker doesn't offer total Year
2000 protection--you'll still need to ensure that your applications themselves are Year 2000 compliant.
Virus Scanner
Virus Scanner is a much cut-down version of McAfee's VirusScan. Invoked only on demand, it runs off the same
virus database as VirusScan. However, Virus Scanner just detects viruses; it doesn't clean them out. S&S
doesn't have anything in its armoury which cleans up virus attacks, although some of the S&S utilities
are capable of cleaning up the effects of some viruses.
WinGauge Lite
WinGauge Lite is a mini version of the WinGauge shipped with Hurricane 98 (reviewed in PC Update, July 1998).
Lite monitors system resources, physical memory, disk space and fragmentation; things PC Checkup doesn't
test. If you have a hard drive that uses SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology), Lite
also monitors the health of the drive. Unlike the full version of WinGauge, Lite doesn't have visible gauges;
it tucks an icon away in your System Tray, and emerges only to warn you when a threshold is triggered.
Other utilities
Other utilities included with S&S are:
- Discover, which displays detailed system information in graphical format
- Rescue Disk, which creates a bootable startup disk
- Instant Update, which updates S&S to the latest version (including the Virus Scanner)
- Personal Trainer for Windows 95, a third-party Windows 95 tutorial.
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PC Checkup found an intimidatingly long list of problems on my machine, mostly associated with software errors--invalid DLLs, invalid file associations, orphaned registry entries and so on. Of the 86 problems it found, it fixed three automatically, but needed guidance for the rest (e.g. did I want to delete the problem files or repair them?). S&S claims on its packaging that it "fixes more problems than First Aid 98". While I didn't test this claim as such,
my overall impression is that Checkup offers more automated or semi-automated fixes for specific problems than does First Aid. As part of my tests, I also changed certain system settings on my machine that I knew from past experience First Aid could detect. Unfortunately, Checkup failed to detect these inferior settings, leading me to conclude that First Aid may have an edge as far as diagnostics go. Checkup also lacks First Aid's ability to ignore specified errors on successive diagnostic runs.
Bomb Shelter saved me from disaster a few times, but didn't always work; I've yet to encounter a 100 per cent failproof crash protection utility. As for WinGauge, it kept a close eye on my computer, but I'm still trying to work out how it came up with a figure of 46 per cent fragmentation for one of my hard drives, while Microsoft Disk Defragger insisted fragmentation was 6 per cent. Since my hard drive is new, I tend to believe Microsoft.
S&S's documentation is very obscure in some areas, such as what to do if a virus attacks your computer. On the other hand, none of its utilities need much configuring, and when they do, wizards step you through the process. S&S's most valuable weapons are Retake, Image, Year 2000 Checker and Discover. WinGauge Lite is nice, but lacks the grunt of its full-featured sibling. PC Checkup has some weaknesses, but remains a reasonably good--not great--diagnostic utility. If you're a beginner or intermediate computer user, if S&S's mix of tools fits your particular needs, and if you're after value for money, S&S may suit you. Just be aware of its limitations and do bolster it with a better virus protection package.
Reprinted from the October 1998 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
