CONS

• License limitations.
• Lacks Windows 10-specific features.
• No community-based features.

Norton Utilities Premium Crack boasts a clean and easy-to-navigate interface that’s divided into five areas. The Dashboard displays your PC’s health, the start-up time for third-party software, free hard drive space, a large one-click optimization icon, and other information. Performance lets you run individual tools, such as Clean Your Registry and Defragment Disks.

Privacy is where you get rid of your digital footsteps by running Clear Your Browsing History, Shred Files, and other functions. Recovery lets you perform five actions, including Recover Lost Files and Restore Registry Backups. Settings is the area where you tweak options for nearly all of the aforementioned features. Norton Utilities’ real-time system monitoring function enables the app to keep an eye on files, so that it can more effectively tune up your PC.

For the most part, those are solid features that you’ll find in just about every tune-up utility of note, and they work well here. I recovered deleted files, permanently deleted others, scrubbed my browser history, and ran various tools with ease. One of my favorite Norton Utilities features is the third-party app start-up time measurer, as it shows you the impact of the apps you have set to run when the PC boots.

Unfortunately, Norton Utilities lacks Windows 10-specific features, though it is compatible with the OS. For instance, Ashampoo WinOptimizer has a cool feature that lets you disable Windows 10’s data collecting from within the app. Norton Utilities could use such a feature. Norton Utilities also lacks a driver updater, process manager, and hard drive and memory monitors. If you want to use Norton Utilities as your tune-up utility of choice, I suggest also downloading IOBit Driver Booster Pro to keep your drivers up to date.

My ideal tune-up utility has a widget that lives in the corner of my desktop that serves up at-a-glance system information. Iolo System Mechanic provides this functionality, and I really dig it. I like keeping an eye on my PC’s system health without having to launch the full app. Norton Utilities lacks this functionality.

Performance Enhancement

Norton Utilities Premium Crack measurably enhances a PC’s performance. I examined the software by performing two tests—running the Geekbench system performance tool and measuring boot times. I performed each test three times and averaged the results, both before and after using the suite to clean the PC, a 2GHz Intel Core i7 notebook with 4GB of RAM and 80GB Intel SSD.

Before Norton Utilities scrubbed the laptop, it achieved a 5,914 Geekbench score and booted in 50.2 seconds. After using Norton Utilities, the GeekBench score rose to 6,008. That’s a definite improvement, but one that’s still more than 200 points short of Iolo System Mechanic’s 6,229 mark. On the other hand, the notebook’s boot time decreased to just 38.3 seconds. That’s almost one second slower than the result acheived with System Mechanic, 37.5 seconds.

After running the tests, I used the computer extensively to get a sense of how the app had changed responsiveness. Norton Utilities delivered a noticeable performance improvement; the entire OS moved at a snappier pace, even with iTunes or Steam open.

Unfortunately, Norton Utilities lacks SlimCleaner Plus’ ($14.99 at iolo technologies) community-based features that help you determine the apps you should or should not uninstall from your PC. That hand-holding may not appeal to PC veterans, but novices would appreciate its inclusion in Norton Utilities and other tune-up applications.

Gets the Job Done

If your PC’s performance is less than stellar, Norton Utilities Premium Crack is one tune-up application that is definitely worth checking out. Norton Utilities did a satisfactory job of degunking our test PC and increasing its overall performance, but it could use additional features, and its installation limitations count against it in the multiple-PC modern world. Norton Utilities is a solid collection of tune-up tools that get the job done, but AVG TuneUp ($14.99 at iolo technologies) and Iolo System Mechanic remain our top picks.

Conclusion

Norton Utilities Premium 21.4.7.642 Crack bundles several useful tools that make a lethargic PC run with new pep, but license limitations limit its appeal for households with multiple PCs.