PC’s are finicky beasts. Manufacturers often select hardware components with cost rather than quality as the primary consideration. The application programs, more and more often required to work together as one toolset face the challenge of not crashing each other; or themselves. Microsoft, the developer of the most popular operating system, Windows, has endeavored mightily to keep their OS running – through version after version – so that today: Windows 7, even installed on a home built PC runs. Well. Reliably.
But it can’t do it alone. At least not on a computer onto which new programs are frequently installed, vast reaches of the Internet are explored and the testing of devices, programs and systems both local and distributed are a constant activity. Windows needs help.
Geeks like me, pay attention to the utilities that can keep PC’s healthy, happy and sound. We don’t like to pay too much – or anything for the utilities. But they have to work to keep the machine going and to get us out of trouble when something goes wrong in spite of our protective efforts.
Of the many independent developers and companies that create utilities for PCs, one of the best is iolo technologies. They call themselves the PC Tune-up Experts and having used a wide range of their products, free and not-so, over the years I can attest to the fact that they are the go-to company for the tools to keep your PC humming.
This review if on Iolo’s core product for individual use: System Mechanic. This venerable product is now up to version 10.5 and those years of experience show clearly in its mature, easy to navigate interface, broad range of features and ease of use. Ease of use is important, even for experienced folks, for at least two reasons. First of all, you don’t want to spend large amounts of time doing a tune-up. Tune-ups should be fast and invisible. But you also don’t want to make wrong choices when the mechanic asks you about what to do about an odd file, registry entry and so forth. System Mechanic does a great job in providing the information you need to make those choices without burdening you with too much jargon or obscure references.
What’s best:
The first thing I like is the first thing you see when the program start up:
The overview screen shows you your systems status – in this case Poor, plus suggestions on ways to improve performance. If you have faith, you can merely click Repair All and everything will be taken care of, but if you’re like me, you both want to be in control and know that some of the things a tool such as System Mechanic sees as problems are things you’ve done on purpose. So, you should click View Problems. This is where System Mechanic stands out:
The list alone provides excellent information on the issues found and gives you the option to choose which items to fix, drill down and select items to fix with higher granularity, schedule maintenance and most importantly, choose to ignore certain problems. Because for you, they’re not a problem.
For example, one of the problems System Mechanic identified on this PC was that there were 4 repairable security vulnerabilities. If you click the repair button you can choose to repair the problems right away, hide the problem or start a wizard from which you can determine what to do about the identified vulnerabilities.
For example, the first item in the list is my company’s SharePoint portal. It’s showing up as a trusted site. Which it should be. But System Mechanic explains the risks. You’re then given the option to repair – meaning no longer trusting the site – or ignore this issue for this session or permanently. Similarly .hta, a .js and a .vbe files were found. All of these can pose risks to security. If you look closely you can see that the recommended repair is very slick – open the files in notepad. This prevents them from executing so you can inspect the files if you’re unsure.
These clear, well documented choices are available for all the repair scenarios. What’s best about this is that after a few months, System Mechanic is ignoring things you want it to ignore and you can do your repairs more quickly.
This same attention to ease of use and what I call user screw-up protection is carried out throughout the product. Whether you’re looking to automate some or all of the maintenance tasks or check your Internet Security status, the interface is clear, and well explained.
My other favorite set of features is the toolbox. Here you will find a selection of maintenance and repair tools that can be run individually or in sets to handle almost any system issue.
I’m the type of guy who likes to run the tools separately when I have a problem, but the batch ones work great when I just need to clean up a mess.
I could go on trough all the features, but you’d be better off just downloading a trial version to see for yourself. Better yet, just buy the darn thing. It’s not expensive and it really works well.
Before I go, there’s one more set of features that are extremely useful. It starts with reports that show you the status of your computer – nothing unusual there, but beautifully presented – and goes to a history view that shows you what System Mechanic has done on your machine over time.
What makes the history so useful is that there is also the ability, via SafetyNet to revert the changes from a session – just in case you didn’t let System Mechanic prevent you from doing something stupid.
There are lots of products that offer similar collections of utilities. In fact, iolo makes one called Advanced Systems Care that comes in both free and Pro (money) based versions. But for me, System Mechanic offers the best combination of tools, ease of use, regular updates, and functionality of the products I’ve used. And, when I’ve completed a session, my computer runs better. And that’s no placebo effect!
