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System Mechanic 7
Type of Program: System Utility
Supported Platforms: Win 98/Me/2000/XP/Vista
Company Name: iolo technologies, LLC.
Version: 7
Price: $49.95
Installed Size: 16 Mb
Download/Homepage
The installation of System Mechanic 7 is easy and intuitive. You
can place the program files where you want them. At the end of the installation
you are offered the option of getting emailed maintenance reports. I choose not
to receive them.
When you start up System Mechanic 7 you are informed that you have 30 days to
evaluate the full program. More than fair and in the true spirit of Shareware.
Then you get a Welcome Screen that offers to perform a system analysis now. I
choose yes. In two minutes I had the results of what they called a Quick
Analysis. Here are those results, (Win Vista):
5 GB of system clutter, 21 registry problems, 15 repairable security
vulnerabilities, 2 unnecessary startup items, internet connection not optimized
for maximum speed and memory level low. It also said that I didn't detect an
active Firewall. Of course that scared the poop out of me, so I immediately
checked and yes my Windows Vista firewall was running.
Then I ran a Deep Analysis. The Quick Analysis only took a few minutes, the Deep
Analysis took almost an hour. It found a whole lot more than the Quick Analysis.
This time it found errors on my hard drive, 143 registry problem, and here is
the one that took my breath away 209 broken shortcuts, 3 spyware parasites, 503
Mb of Windows temp files, and 3 processes in my Windows Startup that it didn't
like. It also wanted to defrag my drives. Now in "The Old Days" other versions
of System Mechanic showed you, if you wanted, a detailed list of these problems
and you could look through them and see if there were any things that you didn't
want System Mechanic to mess with. Now you can only not do a whole section. I
let System Mechanic do everything but mess with my startup and do a defrag. The
reason is that it pointed out two things in the Quick Analysis that I knew I
wanted to keep, the defrag I do with other software.
Strangely enough..
The Remove Temporary Windows Files part that said it would take:
< 1 minute
It really took 15 minutes. The Remove Spyware actually took less than a minute
as did the Repair Broken Shortcuts and Repair Registry problems. The Repair Hard
Drive Problems that was supposed to take 1 - 3 minutes took 3 minutes.
Now at this point it is almost a week later. First of all I went to the company
website for support on the program not finding the firewall, just like the Help
file told me to. There I was told to try one thing and if that didn't work to
send them a particular file. I did that. Have I gotten any response? No. Does my
computer work faster and better? No. Are there any problems since installing
System Mechanic that weren't there before. Yes. I actually have some software
that won't run. Plus other strange things are happening.
In conclusion in trying to make System Mechanic more idiot proof they have
actually made a program that doesn't give you any way to check on what most of
it's repairs are, thereby screwing up royally. Don't buy it!
Performance:
User Friendly:
Cost:
Ease of Installation: 
Support: 0
Reviewed by Joe Tex
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