Norton Anti-Virus (1990) 0 Utility DOS Windows

Originally written by Symantec and sold as Symantec Antivrus for Macintosh, it became part of the "Norton" branded products sold by Symantec after they acquired Peter Norton Computing. Norton Anti-Virus became a popular product on DOS, Windows, and Macintosh (SAM was renamed to NAV in 1998) and battled the then-new threat of malicious software. In 2015, Symantec unified their security product lineup under the single "Norton Security" product. It was also bundled with Norton SystemWorks.

• 1.0
• 1.5
• 2.0
• Michelangelo Edition

McAfee VirusScan (1995) 1 Utility DOS Windows OS2

McAfee VirusScan was a very popular and reliable virus scanner during the late 90s. Notably, they distributed a free shareware version of their product. VirusScan was often pre-loaded with OEM computers.

• 2.x
• 4.x

PartitionMagic (1995) 37 Utility DOS Windows

A tool from PowerQuest, and later Symantec, that enables manipulation of partitions through its own bootable media. PartitionMagic can shrink, grow, or move partitions without the need to backup and restore files in that partition. It supported a variety of file systems, and the core DOS-based parition tool fit on a bootable 1.44mb floppy disk. It was extremely popular, and made installing or removing multiple OSes much easier.

• 2.x
• 3.x
• 4.x

Norton Utilities (1983) 37 Utility DOS

The Norton Utilities is a suite of disk and system utilities designed to enhance system performance and stability. It started off as a set of disk utilities written by Peter Norton, and later was sold by Symantec. It competed against Central Point PC Tools and the Mace Utilities. In 2003, Norton Utilities was merged with Norton SystemWorks, but later split back out.

• 2.0x
• 3.00
• 3.10
• 4.0
• 4.5
• 5.0
• 6.0
• 7.0
• 8.0

SpinRite (1988) 15 Utility DOS

SpinRite, by Gibson Research, is a tool that can diagnose, repair, and rejuvenate the low-level formatting and optimize the interleave of MFM and RLL (ST412/506 interface) hard disk drives. Its pattern testing ability is also useful for verifying the operation of SCSI and IDE hard drives.

• 1.x
• II
• 3.x
• 4.x
• 5.0

PKZip (1990) 6 Utility DOS

Pkzip is the most common archiver for MS-DOS based systems. It implements a an open compression method and is much faster than other archivers of its time.

• 1.x
• 2.0x

WordPerfect Library (1998) 1 Utility Editor PIM DOS

WordPerfect Library, introduced in 1986 and later renamed WordPerfect Office (not to be confused with Corel's Windows office suite of the same name), was a package of DOS network and stand-alone utility software for use with WordPerfect. The package included a DOS menu shell and file manager, whose macros allowed text to be moved from one program to another (for example, from WordPerfect to Calendar, and vice versa), a do-all editor, apparently that of Wordperfect 3.0, which could edit binary files as well as WordPerfect or Shell macros, calendar, and a general purpose flat file database program that could be used as the data file for a merge in WordPerfect and as a contact manager.

• 2.0

DiskClone (1998) 0 Utility DOS

DiskClone, from Quarterdeck, is a simple, professional, small, powerful, and easy to use hard disk cloning tool. It can copy a drive to another internal or external drive of different sizes. It can be used as a backup, or a migration tool to a new drive. It all fits on a single floppy disk. "Corporate" editions.

• 1.0

GroupWise (1997) 0 Communications PIM Server DOS

Originally created by WordPerfect Corp in 1987 as WordPerfect Office (groupware), and acquired by Novell in 1994 where it became GroupWise, GroupWise is a cross-platform collaboration platform that includes email, calendaring, personal information management, instant messaging, and document management.

• 5.x

Packard Bell Navigator (1993) 0 Utility Other DOS

Packard Bell Navigator is an alternate user interface that replaces the Windows 3.1 Program Manager shell. It presents the content of your computer as a series of rooms.

• 3.5

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing (1988) 0 Education DOS

An interactive typing tutor for the IBM PC that uses a variety of entertaining learning styles.

• 1

Policies Now! (1993) 0 Utility Publishing DOS

Policies Now is a document creation wizard that specializes in corporate policies. It provides general purpose templates with carefully constructed language that are customized via a series of questions. The results may be manually customized further with a built in text editor. accompanied by "DescriptionsWrite Now!" (A job description writing tool), and "Personal Policy Expert". These were renamed to "Policies Now!", "Description Now!", and "Policies Now! HR Pro Edition" respectively.

• 1.30

EZ-Drive (1996) 1 Utility DOS

EZ-Drive is a hard disk partitioning tool bundled with new hard drives. It detects, partitions, formats drives, and installs BIOS overlays, all in one easy to use program. Such setup programs were often necessary due to the complexity of BIOS size limitation and the skyrocketing size of new hard drives. EZ-Drive is similar to Ontrack Disk Manager.

• 8.x

DESQView (1984) 6 Utility DOS

DESQView, from Quarterdeck, was a DOS application multi-tasker and in later versions functioned as an X client for applications on remote UNIX systems. It competed against IBM Topview. The original DESQ was just a task switcher, but subsequent versions offered preemptive multitasking of well behaved DOS programs on real-mode 8088 PCs. It gained popularity when DESQView 386 added virtual x86 support. This enabled the ability to multi task many poorly behaved programs, and was often used on BBSes due to its excellent COM port handling. It was later overtaken by OS/2 and Windows.

• 1.x
• DESQView X 1.x
• 2.x
• DESQView X 2.x

Sidekick (1984) 5 Utility PIM DOS

Borland Sidekick is a DOS based PIM (Personal Information Manager) and one of the first widely-used TSR (terminate and stay resident) programs. The key feature of Sidekick was that one could use Sidekick's utilities while using most other MS-DOS applications. This was important because MS-DOS had no built-in multi-tasking or task switching capabilities.

• 1.x
• Plus
• 2.0

ToyBox Menu Manager / Magic Desk (1992) 0 Utility DOS

ToyBox II, later renamed to Magic Desk, is a simplified graphical menu system that lets you launch your DOS applications from a selection of tiled iconic buttons. Supports nested hierarchies, includes an icon editor, and a number of common icons.

• 2.x
• 3.x (Magic Desk)

IBM AntiVirus (1995) 0 Utility DOS OS2

IBM AntiVirus is a comprehensive but easy to use virus scanner that supports DOS, OS/2, and Windows. It features the use of "Neural Network" technology, whatever that means, heuristic analysis, change detection, and false alarm elimination. It supports scanning e-mail, attachments, macros, and the ability to run suspicious programs without spreading infections.

• 2.x

Helix Netroom (1995) 0 Utility DOS

Helix Netroom is a memory manager, similar to their Helix Headroom product, but specifically targeted at machines running DOS networking software. Unlike other 386 memory managers that simply page in extra high/UMB RAM, Netroom moves specifically supported TSRs in to an invisible background virtual machine. As a result, large DOS network stacks may be loaded yet not take up any conventional memory needed to run DOS applications. Netroom supported Novell NetWare, Banyan VINES, and LAN Manager networks.

• 3.x

InfoCentral (1994) 0 PIM DOS

InfoCentral is Personal Information Manager that can create and store outlines, calendars, contacts, and todo lists using an object-oriented tree structure. It features a customizable database, can "connect" to information from other windows programs, a built-in dialer, and bundles several pre-populated reference "ibases". purchased by Novell, and later owned by Corel. It was initially part of WordPerfect's "Main Street" software family. Software Inc Ecco Professional.

• 1.10

AnyTime (1992) 0 PIM DOS

AnyTime, from Individual Software, is a personal information manager that helps you keep track of day-to-day appointments, events, and to-do items. You can keep a list of family, friends, and business contacts using the Address Book.

• 1.0

DiskLock (1993) 0 Utility DOS Windows

DiskLock, From Fifth Generation Systems, and later from Symantec as Norton DiskLock, is a data security tool that can lock a hard disk or individual files or directories so that it requires a password to access any data. It can also log activity to detect unauthorized access attempts. It also features the ability to lock the system after an idle usage period. There were versions for PC and Mac.

• 2.x
• 3.x

CheckIt (1988) 10 Utility DOS

CheckIt, from TouchStone Software Corporation, is a diagnostic tool for generic PC/XT/AT compatible computers. It can perform tests on RAM, hard disks, video cards, floppy disks, motherboard resources, and I/O devices. It has an easy to use menu interface but can also run tests non-interactively. It was followed up by the product WINCheckit.

• 1.x
• 2.1
• 3.0
• LAN 2.x
• Pro 1.x

Conner Backup Basics (1993) 0 Utility DOS

Conner Backup Basics is a dumbed down version of Conner Backup Exec that only works with their tape drives. This software will not run at all without the appropriate tape drive attached.

• 1.1 (DOS)

Health and Diet (1993) 0 Reference Education DOS

Health & Diet, from Digital Systems Research, Inc, is a friendly and feature rich database program for DOS that assists users in keeping track of their weight loss and eating habits.

• 1.x

Trend Micro Chip Away (1993) 0 Utility DOS

Released in the early 90s by the Japanese company Trend Micro Devices, Inc (later just Trend Micro), Chip Away Viruses is a DOS based virus scanner that is intended to run from a hardware product built in to a PC motherboard before the system boots. It includes a custom embeddable DOS (called X-DOS), but it can be run from regular DOS. Trend Micro also produced the products PC Rx (A regular software virus scanner), and PC-cillin (a hardware/software combo that keeps critical boot information in a special device). Users sometimes misinterpreted the name "ChipAway Virus" as being a virus itself.

• 2.x