SYMANTEC CORPORATION
PETER NORTON PRODUCT GROUP
DECEMBER 5, 1990


       NORTON UTILITIES 5.0 AND NETWORK COMPATIBILITY 


The Norton Utilities have expanded network compatibility,
especially with Novell networks.  There are still certain
limitations, and those will be discussed here.

A general limitation is that any of the Norton Utilities that
do low-level disk access cannot be used on a network drive.

Sounds great.  But what does this really mean?

Mainly because of the problems involving multiple users,
network drives usually operate under their own operating
systems, which are distinctly different from the standard DOS
file system.

Novell is the best example of a network that uses a different
file system.  To be compatible with DOS, the Novell operating
system translates DOS file requests into its own language.
This works fine for files and directories, but the Norton
Utilities have the ability to work far beneath the file level,
and to directly manipulate the system areas of the disk.  This
is definitely forbidden on a Novell network server drive.

On the other hand, some networks are DOS based, which means
that they use the standard DOS file structure.  These types of
networks should have little or no problems with any of the
Norton Utilities.  LANtastic and 3COM are good examples of this
type of network.

The official word on the Norton Utilities is that they are
compatible only with Novell networks.  This does not mean that
they will not work on any other network, just that we have not
certified them for use with any other network.  Some of the
programs have Novell-specific calls built into the programs to
make full use of the Novell file system, and these calls will
not work on non-Novell systems.

NONE of the utilities can be run directly from the network
server.  The only way to access the utilities is from a network
node which was booted from the DOS operating system and then
logged on to the network.

The following programs WILL NOT WORK on network drives (even
from a node):

Norton Disk Doctor II
Disk Tools
Speed Disk
Calibrate
UnFormat
Image
Safe Format
Norton Cache

The reason these programs will not work is because they need to
write to the drive using DOS file calls and in a way which is
not translatable by the Novell operating system.

The following programs WILL WORK on network drives:

FileFix
File Save (highly recommended for network drives)
Disk Monitor (except Disk Park)
System Information
Norton Control Center
Batch Enhancer
Norton Change Directory (NCD)
File Find

The following programs have limitations when used on network drives:

UnErase - can only UnErase files on a network drive if File
Save was previously installed and active at the time of file
deletion.

Disk Editor - can view and edit files in hex format.  Cannot
work directly with clusters, sectors, physical sectors, FAT
tables, boot sectors, or partition tables.

Diskreet - cannot create encrypted NDisks on network drives,
but can encrypt and decrypt FILES.

WipeInfo - can wipe FILES, but cannot wipe DISKS.

Disk Monitor - cannot protect system areas, but most network
operating systems do this automatically.


Written By:  Ed Carlin
Technical Support Group

