My Most Memorable PC Utilities

When I first started working for a global  computer manufacturer in the 80's, Software Utilities really were the vital tools that became your most important accessories! These now obsolete MS-DOS tools were the very heartbeat of my daily existence. Here are some of my favorites with screen images for those who have forgotten, or wish to see what they looked like:

Low Level Format:  Much of the time setting up the first generation of XT (and even later the 2nd generation AT) PC's revolved around installing and configration of the hard drives. I spent a lot of time working with Seagate ST225 MFM hard drives back then. I even worked on older 10 MB Shugart drives, but it was Seagate 20MB drives that had started to dominate the industry by then (Many vendors have since disappeared: Anyone remember Conner, Maxtor, Hitachi, Quantum, Fujitsu etc.?).   The point though, is that Disk Utilities both within MS-DOS as well as 3rd party, were vital tools that were used daily.

 
With these 20MB drives (yes, Mega...not Giga), one had to use the debug command followed by g=c800:5 followed by FDISK and then the FORMAT commands.  This was always painfully slow and cumbersome...but was an absolute necessity, and always worked.

Norton Utilities: First came out in 1982. It was a complete suite designed to help analyze, configure, optimize and maintain a MS-DOS based computer. It very quickly became the Gold Standard!
Norton Utilities was eventually sold to Symantec who have kept the trademark brand.

Norton Disk Doctor was legendary.... compulsory for every Techie!

OnTrack Disk Manager: Popular in the 1980's for self installing hard drives.

PC Tools: Another popular suit of software for MS-DOS that first came out in 1986. PC Tools was also eventually bought out by Symantec but was killed off as a brand.

LapLink: Proprietary Utility software that was developed in the late 1980's to synchronize PC's using serial and parallel cables. The parallel cables were much faster.

 

PCAnywhere: A suite of computer programs which allowed a user on a computer to connect to another PC running the PCAnywhere host if both were connected to the network, and the password was known. It was released (for MS-DOS) in 1986

All of these were popular too:

Speedstor: Another popular Disk Utility used to Low Level Format Hard Drives.

Spinrite: A Utility to Diagnose, Repair and Rejuvenate Hard Drives

Speed / Speed Test: Landmark CPU speed test.

Xtree / Xtree Gold: A File manager first launched in 1985.

CopyWrite:  Created by Quaid Software for making legal backup copies of a protected program.

Quaid Analyzer: Also from Quaid Software. It was a tool for the diagnosis of programs at the level of machine language and interrupt service calls.

Fast forward three decades, and I still use utilities, but very few 3rd party ones are really needed anymore. One of these I use regularly and is worthy of mention:

CCleaner: Safe way to ensure removal of unwanted "gumph", unwanted built-in Microsoft Apps, as well a very decent Registry Cleaner too!

Edit: Many of the old Utilities have been "abandoned" by their developers, but luckily can still be found in a large database at: vetusware.com