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Maybe you've never experienced a real PC disaster, a full-fledged data-spewing-from-every-port meltdown. Maybe you've never needed the kind of tips found in "Troubleshooting Is My Business." Lucky you. But trust us, someday your PC will turn on you. Unless, that is, you arm yourself first. The right Windows utilities can save you from a world of hurt.

The question is, how much help do you need? We enlisted six utilities experts to compare Windows 95/98's built-in tools with 35 third-party utilities. For each utility category, we asked our reviewers to address one question: When does it make sense to pay extra money for a third-party utility, given that you can obtain much of the same functionality from Windows itself?

Microsoft released Windows 98 more than a year ago, with plenty of noise about the operating system's new tools--like Disk Cleanup and System Information. But these and other enhancements don't guarantee you'll be able to handle every problem that comes with Windows. Many users will discover they need third-party utilities to keep their PCs in tune.

The utilities we examined fall into eight categories: suites, diagnostics, uninstallers, file compressors, crash monitors and recovery tools, file managers, file viewers, and undoers and undeleters.

Wondering where the antivirus and Y2K utilities are? For the latter, you'll have to wait until next month for our Y2K roundup. For the former, turn to "Virucide!" in our February issue. Symantec's Norton AntiVirus has now won our World Class award for best antivirus program three years in a row. And because the overwhelming majority of our readers currently use Windows 95/98, we didn't look at any Windows NTA-specific products, though some of the ones we reviewed will work for all three Microsoft operating systems.