SANTA MONICA, CA -- December 8, 1997 -- Delivering on its promise to bring its self-healing software technology to the business and enterprise markets, retail software leader CyberMedia (NASDAQ: CYBR) today introduced the first product in the CyberMedia Support Server (tm) line of Automatic Technical Support products and services for networked Microsoft ® Windows NT and Windows 95 and Windows 3.1 PCs -- CyberMedia Support Server Repair Engine (tm) (CSS) for Workgroups, 1.0.

The first line of automatic technical support products that breaks the traditional "them-or-us" paradigm, CyberMedia Support Server meets the technical support needs of end users and the requirements of network administrators at the same time.

CyberMedia Support Server Repair Engine for Workgroups is designed for workgroups within larger corporations and small-to mid-size businesses. An enterprise version of the product is planned, as well as a complete line of integrated products and services developed specifically to ease the technical support burden and lower the total cost of PC ownership (TCO).

CyberMedia Support Server can reduce TCO in businesses by up to 30% by proactively resolving time-consuming technical support problems on the desktop, while at the same time providing total control for the administrator from a central console. This significantly reduces end-user downtime, liberating support personnel from repetitive calls with routine issues and freeing up the administrator to focus on more strategic tasks, or simply perform their regular jobs.

The Best of Both Worlds:
Desktop Repair; Central Control
"The current practice of trying to solve the problems of distributed systems with centralized solutions is fundamentally flawed. Managing desktops requires a solution that incorporates both the centralized policy needs of the support organization and the crucial openness that made the personal computer successful in the first place," said Bob Davis, CyberMedia vice president of marketing. "With CSS, support organizations can implement necessary policy and stay in the driver's seat, and end users can continue to experience the freedom and flexibility of using a personal computer."

CSS puts the administrator in control of problem resolution, is completely invisible to the user and does not interrupt normal use of the PC. And, unlike central system management tools, which are primarily reactive, CSS Repair Engine resolves many problems proactively on the desktop - before they escalate into larger issues.

Utilizing an extensive knowledge base of problems and their resolutions, CSS Repair Engine is able to prevent or automatically address most common PC problems - such as bad or missing drivers and DLLs, crashes, unstable applications, disconnected shortcuts and programs that change the registry or .ini files.

If a problem becomes evident, CSS notifies the administrator. If the administrator chooses to authorize a repair, CSS Repair Engine then resolves the problem. The administrator can also initiate a scan at any time, and issue repairs to individual users or complete profile groups at the same time. The support department is always in total control - and the end users' workday is rarely interrupted.

Leverages Proven ActiveHelp Technology
Leveraging CyberMedia's proven ActiveHelp(tm) technology, already in use worldwide by over 3 million users of its best-selling retail product line - including First Aid®, Oil Change(tm), UnInstaller® and Guard Dog (tm) - CSS Repair Engine has been completely architected from the ground up with the needs of the enterprise and IT manager in mind.

Unlike simple push or indiscriminate publish and subscribe, ActiveHelp's "Recognize-and-Deliver" technology intelligently senses system needs and dispatches responses to precisely address those issues. ActiveHelp enables CSS Repair Engine to deliver intelligent responses to user and administrator needs.

"Users and administrators have a common goal - to maximize uptime and productivity," says Ken Mackin, manager of enterprise products at CyberMedia. "The combination of ActiveHelp technologies in CSS Repair Engine gives users the freedom to work and MIS the power to support. Even if CSS Repair Engine doesn't have the repair in its database, support personnel - armed with detailed information - get rapid and effective diagnostics that can frequently enable a solution in minutes."

Reduces TCO by Up to 30%
According to the Gartner Group, an organization with 1,000 nodes averages 72 help desk calls a day. These calls average between $22 and $41 per call. CSS Repair Engine can conservatively prevent between 25-30% of potential help desk calls. This results in savings of over $100,000 per year with just 1,000 nodes, which means that a successful return on investment (ROI) is accomplished in just four months.

Industry analysts and customers alike agree that the most significant contributing factors to the rising total cost of PC ownership (TCO) in the enterprise are:

1. Inability to establish and maintain standard desktop configurations throughout the enterprise.
2. Conflicts and incompatibilities between applications.
3. Unauthorized changes to PC desktops by end users.
4. The increasingly complex nature of PC applications and their interdependencies with other applications and the operating system itself.
5. Attempts to solve the problems of distributed systems with centralized management tools.

1. Proactive Problem Management -- Software conflicts comprise over 80% of the problems facing help desk administrators today. By proactively intercepting and repairing many of these problems, and preventing others altogether, CSS Repair Engine significantly reduces the number of help desk calls.
2. Configuration and Simple Inventory Information -- Establishing a uniform desktop configuration has long been the dream of many a network administrator. CSS Repair Engine establishes a known configuration and simple inventory on the user's desktop, so additional problems can be prevented. With CSS Repair Engine, call time is significantly reduced since the administrator is already intimately familiar with the PC's configuration.
3. Change Management -- Once a standard desktop configuration is established, monitoring becomes the next task. Many organizations have seen the short-term benefit of standardized desktops after installing the same new software on each PC. Unfortunately it takes very little time for those pristine new PCs to become infiltrated with custom settings, games and unauthorized applications.

   CSS Repair Engine monitors the configuration, and automatically notifies the administrator when the configuration changes. It also gives the administrator the ability to revert back to the last known working configuration. It provides a log of all changes that have taken place, and its TimeTrak feature acts like a "time machine" to take the PC back a step to the configuration that worked.

A Team Player: Leveraging Existing
Hardware and Software Investments
CyberMedia Support Server Repair Engine further reduces TCO by leveraging the corporation's existing hardware and software investment, enabling corporations to continue utilizing existing help desk tools and PC hardware (rather than replacing it with network computers).

In stark contrast to proprietary "stove-pipe" products from other vendors, CSS Repair Engine integrates with third-party solutions and supports multiple industry standards. CSS Repair Engine works side-by-side with help desk solutions from Remedy ARS, Clarify, Vantive, and Scopus, addressing low-level/routine support requirements, increasing efficiency and making the help desk proactive, rather than reactive.

System Requirements
CyberMedia Support Server requires Microsoft ® Windows NT 4.0 with at least Service Pack 3 installed; Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 installed for the Repair Engine Database; Microsoft Internet Information Server (3.0) with Active Server Pages add-on; Microsoft FrontPage 97 extensions.

The client software supports Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 3.1. Database space requirements are between 1.0 MB and 1.5 MB per client.

Pricing and Availability
CyberMedia Support Server Repair Engine 1.0 for Workgroups will be available from VARs, resellers, service and support organizations and systems integrators throughout North America and the United Kingdom. CSS Repair Engine for Workgroups is available in 50, 25, 10-seat and five-seat licenses. The 50-seat license is being offered at an introductory price of $90 per seat.

About CyberMedia
CyberMedia's mission is to help computer users, anytime, anywhere with a complete set of products and services that provide the highest quality of immediate help to computer users at home and work, all over the world.

CyberMedia's retail products comprise 11.2% of the top 25 retail business titles sold in 1996, according to PC Data, and are bestsellers in Germany and the United Kingdom. They include First Aid, to fix Windows problems automatically; Oil Change, to update PCs with the latest bug fixes, patches and drivers; UnInstaller, to clean Window's applications; and PC Guard Dog, to protect PCs from Internet intruders and viruses.

Special customized OEM versions of CyberMedia's technology are also available pre-installed on millions of hardware products and services from leading PC makers and distribution partners including America Online, AST, CompuServe, CompUSA, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Netscape, Packard Bell-NEC, Phoenix Technologies and Sony.

Founded in 1991, CyberMedia employs more than 250, with company headquarters in Santa Monica, CA and offices in San Jose, CA; Portland, OR; Washington, D.C.; Japan; Ireland and India. For additional information contact CyberMedia, Inc., 3000 Ocean Park Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90405; phone (310)581-4700; fax (310)581-4720; or visit http://www.cybermedia.com.

Note: CyberMedia, Oil Change, Guard Dog, First Aid, UnInstaller, and the CyberMedia logo are trademarks of CyberMedia, Inc. All other trade names are trademarks of their respective owners.

Press Contact:
Giselle Bisson
CyberMedia
(310) 664-5261
giselle@cybermedia.com

Steve O'Keeffe
O'Keeffe & Company
(703)532-6107
sokeeffe@okeeffeco.com

APPENDIX: HOW CYBERMEDIA SUPPORT SERVER WORKS
CyberMedia Support Server Repair Engine is comprised of three main components, the Client Agent for Windows 3.1, Windows95, and Windows NT, which scans the system and reports problems; the Support Server, which resides on a Windows NT Server, and the administrator Console, which provides information to the desktop administrator.

The Repair Engine is installed on an employee's PC in several ways; it can be hidden so that the employee never knows that it is running in the background; it can be an icon that can be maximized to explain the problem, or it can be configured to alert the user that a scan is taking place. All of these variations are configurable by the network administrator. The client components, for Windows NT, 95, or 3.1 operating systems, work silently in the background.

The desktop administrator schedules when Repair Engine scans a user's machine, for example, upon start up or every day at the same time. It will look for any symptoms of a potential crash or problem, such as missing DLL entries or software/hardware conflicts. The scans and repair scenarios are governed by detailed 'profiles' set up by the desktop administrator to direct different scanning and repair options to different users within the organization.

When it detects a potential problem, it sends a report to the CyberMedia Support Server, located elsewhere on the network. The Support Server then creates a report describing the situation to the Console. The Console database keeps a running history of all known problems with each machine, prioritized by the severity of the problem, and is designed to hold multiple configurations from a single machine at once. Application problems can be assigned priority 1 (the highest priority) while multimedia problems can be assigned priority 5 (the lowest). The desktop administrator defines these priorities, so they can "triage" problems and respond only to those that are most urgent.

Written in Java, the Console enables administrators to dial in to review "wellness" and automatically dispatch repair solutions, whether in the office, or on the other side of the globe. The Console interface runs on Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.02, or Netscape Navigator 4.0 or higher. At the Console, the desktop administrator can choose to Ep Now, enable AutoRepair(tm), or if it is a particularly severe issue or a prohibited application, implement the TimeTrak(tm) feature.

AutoFix detects a problem, searches its PC-resident database of solutions, and returns the repair to the desktop. Conversely, TimeTrak keeps a log of all previous configurations and allows the desktop administrator to reinstate a previous set of important configuration files, including the registry, and then "takes the computer back in time" to the last configuration that worked.