CyberMedia had sold more than a million copies of a program called First Aid by 1996. Windows PCs of the day crashed when a modem, a video card and a new program refused to get along. First Aid drew on a knowledge base that covered more than 10,000 combinations of problems and fixed many of them on its own. In October 1996 the Santa Monica company released Oil Change, which updated software and drivers over the internet.

Tech Support in a Box

Unni Warrier co-founded CyberMedia in November 1991 with Srikanth Chari and Anne Lam. Warrier had earlier co-founded NetLabs, a maker of UNIX network management tools. The bet was that tech support was costly and getting scarce, and that software could do much of the job. First Aid was the core product. Oil Change aimed to keep a PC current by fetching updates online, a chore most users never did.

Bought for Its Fixes

CyberMedia sold 2.5 million shares at $16 in October 1996, raising $40 million, and listed on Nasdaq as CYBR. The IPO came the same month Oil Change shipped. In 1998 Network Associates launched a tender offer for CyberMedia at $9.50 a share in cash, well below the IPO price. The offer succeeded, and CyberMedia deregistered its stock that September.

Cover: The Surgeon at Work at the Rear During an Engagement, Winslow Homer. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a field surgeon at work (First Aid).