Norton GoBack 4.0 | 
| From: Symantec
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $28.99
You Save: $21.00 (42%)
Rating:  50 reviews
Sales Rank: 1901
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows Xp
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Operating System: Windows XP
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 7.6 x 1.2
MPN: 10276629
Model: 10276629
UPC: 037648244701
EAN: 0037648244701
ASIN: B0002RQ0WS
Release Date: September 7, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Condition: Brand new in sealed retail box with UPC present. Expedited shipping recommended for faster delivery.
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| Features:
| • | Restore system to healthy state after system problem or user error | | • | Retrieve deleted files easily; recover individual files or an entire hard drive | | • | Quickly find files or folders to restore with search bar | | • | Simple click rolls back disk drive to original state with SafeTry mode | | • | AutoBack for scheduling regular system resets |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Norton GoBack 4.0 handles PC troubles by rolling back your system to a healthy state. Retrieve deleted files, recover data in an emergency and take care of maintenance & troubleshooting. Recovering curcial information has never been easier! Retrieve deleted files easily -- even if they've been overwritten
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| Customer Reviews: Read 45 more reviews...
 Resource hog January 27, 2005
David Margraf (Southlake, TX)
32 out of 34 found this review helpful
I recently loaded GoBack 4 on my 2.8 GHz P4 with 1 gig of ram and SATA hard drive. It's a really fast XP Pro SP1 machine that I keep free of spyware, malware, viruses, unnecessary services; in short, degunked. GoBack dramatically slowed down my machine when running Adaware and Spybot SD. Also, after NAV 2002 scanned, the hard drive was in use for about an hour afterwards with, once again, a dramatic decline in performance. When used with other applications there was a noticable slow down. When two applications were running simultaneously performance degradations were worse. In addition, as noted by others, Symantec's support ranks with the worst.
I suspect it does a great job with recovery. I disabled it before I used that function. I get viruses extremely infrequently. If my antivirus software doesn't repair the problem, I format the hard drive and reload. I back up my important data to Zip discs or an external hard drive frequently and religiously.
If you are looking for a backup solution and don't mind a significant performance penalty, this program is one possibility. It's unfortunate that mainstream PC mags continue to highly recommend Symantec products without mentioning the consistent, serious problems noted by a high percentage of users. I have and will continue to vigorously avoid all Symantec products
 makes that sinking feeling go away January 7, 2005
Zach Scott (Long Island, NY)
18 out of 22 found this review helpful
I have been using GoBack since the mid or late 1990s--I believe it was first sold by Adaptec before Roxio took it over and now Norton sells it. GoBack 4 is the first upgrade by Norton. This is a great product which reverts your hard drive to a state before a problem developed in your hard drive and so will make the problem go away. System restore is okay but GoBack will revert everything on your hard drive not just certain files, so more problems can be corrected, and you can also selectively recover files even if they have been emptied from the recycle bin without having to revert your hard drive. Another advantage is that GoBack loads before Windows so if there is a severe problem with Windows you can still restore Windows to a healthy state. This upgrade has increased the default storage space for a healthy revert from 4GB to 8GB--this means you can go back further in time--from a few days to a week or more depending on your file activity, and has added a few new bells and whistles. I installed GoBack 4 about a week ago and have already used it twice. Aside from antivirus programs, this is the best utility that you can buy.
Problem with GoBack is Hardware (bios) related to Intel processor on Dell Laptop August 24, 2005
Champagne Digital (Eastern Washington, USA)
16 out of 18 found this review helpful
I've been using GoBack since version 2. I upgraded to version 3 for WinXP. In the last 5 or 6 years I'd only come across 2 hardware related problems that caused a problem for GoBack: I had a problem with a computer that had a GeForce2 video card, and I had a problem with a Sony Vaio computer because the mbr had been changed by GoBack and this didn't allow the Sony to run the program to burn the System and Software recovery backup discs that you need if the actual hard drive dies. I didn't find a work around for the video card problem and just changed the video card to a GeForce 4. For the Sony I uninstalled GoBack, ran the recovery disc creation software, and reinstalled GoBack. The Recovery Disc program is a run once program anyway...
Last week, a client that is using the Sony desktop bought a DEll Inspiron 6000 laptop and wanted it set up like his Sony as far as GoBack and another program called CasperXP which he uses to create a bootable copy of his whole system with all files, programs, etc. Every once in awhile his voice dictation software (Dragon) trashes his sound drivers on the Sony and he simply uses GoBack to restore to a complete working system again. Occasionally, something he does to his system has happened far enough in the past, usually due to DVD files using up the GoBack buffer and he can't GoBack far enough to fix a problem, so he uses CasperXP to copy his backup OS from a second drive that we installed. He backs up his entire drive to a second drive every week, and it's bootable!
Anyway, after installing GoBack on the Dell laptop, the machine would no longer boot. I suspected the problem was with the Dell hidden partitions they install for system recovery (as of July 15, 2005 Dell no longer ships the recovery discs and there is no program on the machine to burn them).
I told my client to call Dell as I think these discs should be included as he bought the system and shouldn't have to worry about getting them later if the hard drive fails. After being passed around to 4 or 5 people they finally decided to send him the discs and we reinstalled XP Pro after first removing the hidden partitions from the drive. We gained about 5 gigs back on a 80 gig drive, but we loose the Cntrl+F11 automatic system restore function from Dell.
We installed GoBack and damn! the program still wouldn't allow the OS to boot (We were getting a Blue Screen with an IRQ_ problem. After exploring the bios on the Dell laptop I noticed a setting in the "Security" area called "CPU XD Support". OK, what's this? Not much on Google, so the bios gives a description like "Execute Disable Bit Capability".
(...)
Searching this pdf file for "Execute Disable" lets you find out a little more about the function and the fact that this is a known problem with Intel processors and there is a planned fix. Apparently this is some sort of hardware solution in the processor for some type of "buffer overrun" error or attack.
The solution was to turn of this capability in the Dell bios. GoBack and all other features of XP pro are running fine.
To be fair to GoBack, Adaptec, then Roxio, and now Norton can not control a buggy CPU setting and I'm afraid that many manufacturers that are using this obsure setting in the bios for the Celeron chipset are going to have problems with GoBack and probably other softwares that will get branded as "crap" due to hardware changes.
 Too much of a headache for the average user, great for me December 27, 2005
Waylo (Atlanta, GA)
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
I've been using GoBack since early v3. It has saved me innumerable times from random viruses and misplaced files/accidental deletions. As such, when v4 came out, I assumed it must be better. Not necessarily!
When I upgraded to version 4, things started to go wacko. My computer wouldn't boot past the BIOS screens. After uninstalling it, the computer booted fine. Re-installing v3 however, caused the same strange BIOS freezes. I was pretty bummed that GoBack might be lost to me forever, as it had actually become a valued "security blanket" for my system and my Windows tinkering.
I finally isolated the problem to the changes it was making in the boot sector of the hard drive. My Asus motherboard was picking it up as virus activity and halting the system! After deactivating the viral scan in the motherboard BIOS settings, it ran like a champ. No clue why reinstalling v3 did not fix this.
In summary, GoBack alters and loads at the master boot record of the main hard disk so that even changes made outside of Windows are logged (or are attempted to be logged). My guess is that many problems occur when users unknowingly perform disk activities that are outside of Goback's "normal?" range of logging abilities. Or assume that Symantec has fully tested their product (Yikes, fatal error). Or install it on a computer with a slightly modified boot sequence/BIOS.
You really need to be EXTREMELY vigilant with what you're doing to avoid Goback issues. Essentially, any type of low-level activity (DOS boot-disks, disk partition activity, Spinrite) has the potential to really screw up GoBack as I doubt Symantec has spent the time to really investigate all permutations of disk activity. Anytime I run Spinrite, or defragment (causes ridiculous amounts of disc activity as Goback attempts to log every byte rearrangement), I disable Goback.
When it works, it's a lifesaver. After it screws up, you will hate and curse its name forever!
Buy at your own risk February 25, 2005
Anonymous (USA)
9 out of 12 found this review helpful
Unless you have a brand new computer, or one with a monstrous hard drive, you may wind up wasting your money on this program. When I tried to install the program, it returned an error message that 5,700-plus MB of contiguous free space was needed in order for the program to run. I have a 60 gigabyte hard drive newly degragmented, with huge chunks of contiguous free space, but GoBack repeatedly refused to install. A query to Symantec produced a belated warning about the free space requirement and several suggestions that were not helpful, including the advice that I buy "a third party defragmenter." Since Amazon.com will not accept the return of any CD that has been opened (see their returns policy), I'm stuck with an expensive piece of totally useless software. Another glorious victory for Symantec.
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