System Mechanic or System Cowboy ? (Iolo System Mechanic Professional 08)

Member Name: boredindunoon

Product:	Iolo System Mechanic Professional 08
Date:	31/08/09 (177 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to Install, Good Data Recovery & Drive Scrubbing Abilities.

Disadvantages: Increases Shutdown Time, Stops Explorer & FireFox Working, Often Crashes, Disables Hibernate.

From iolo technologies comes System Mechanic Professional 2008 complete with a one year, three PC licence. Featuring the ability to repair problems with the registry, speed up your computer, clean up Windows, speed up Internet access and accelerate downloads, stop spy-ware and viruses, remove unwanted clutter, and given you the ability to customise settings in Windows. All of which is designed to "...fix, speed up, and secure your PC." Also included in the package is iolo Drive Scrubber, Search & Recover, Personal Firewall, and Antivirus.

There seems to be some difference of opinion with this software. On one hand it's won various awards from Cnet and Computer Shopper and claims to be the "#1 Bestselling PC Tuneup Software," on the other hand there is a wealth of user reviews on sites like Amazon.co.uk and others where many people have only rewarded the product one or two stars based on a huge range of problems ranging from minor to major. Sadly I have to agree with the bulk of user reviews on the Internet as System Mechanic was destined to cause problem after problem after problem.

I choose not to install the anti-virus and firewall elements from System Mechanic as I had just recently installed the latest version of Kaspersky Internet Security Suite, and I didn't want to cause any conflict between the programs. At first things went smoothly as the installation was problem free, and as the software ran for the first time the user interface looked impressive and easy to use. I was looking forward to improving my computer's performance.

However I should have took note of the antidote if it's not broke don't fix it. My computer was running fine without any real problems, and perhaps I temped fate by installing System Mechanic, as it had the metaphorical effect of throwing a spanner into my hard drive.

After installing System Mechanic, the first problem I came across is that the time it takes my computer to shut down tripled. The software doesn't consume much in terms of system resources and starts up without any trouble, so I can't workout why the shut down procedure has been affected in such a negative way.

For some obscure reason after restarting my computer, I couldn't connect to the Internet via Explorer or FireFox (but strangely enough I could with the AOL software.) I tried reinstalling both browsers which didn't fix the problem, and I couldn't find any settings or reason with in System Mechanic that could affect it, and I was stuck using AOL's software while I had System Mechanic installed.

The software crashes often when you're running a spyware scan or virus scan usually just over half way into the scan. I initially suspected that this was simply a conflict with the Ad-Aware program, or even my Kaspersky Internet Security Suite, but disabling both of those programs made no difference.

What I found strange is that the scans that I was able to use found some seven hundred odd problems with various things. I say strange because my computer was working perfectly fine before hand and I would have expected so many apparent problems to cause me problems but they did not. After repairing all the errors I saw no increase what so ever in my systems performance.

The ability to put my system into hibernate mode disappeared completely, the entire 'Hibernate' tab in power options was just gone and even when I uninstalled System Mechanic it didn't come back.

In the end I decided to cut my losses and uninstall System Mechanic but even this caused problems. Towards the end of using the uninstaller my computer took the notion to spontaneously restart, the result was several error messages on restart telling me that files were missing. System Mechanic is still listed in Add/Remove programs but no longer gives me the option of removing it (I think it's holding a grudge against me), and while the bulk of the program is gone I still get the error messages every time my computer starts up.

There seems to be no common factors or explanation to the problems that I encountered and no real method of fixing them. I fear that since uninstalling the program and using system restore hasn't fixed the problems that System Mechanic has caused, my only option in order to get everything back to normal is now to format and reinstall from fresh.

It wasn't all bad as I was quite impressed with the data recovery software which successfully manged to recover some photographs that I had deleted (on purpose just to see if it worked) from a SD memory card. The DriveScrubber also seems effective and a useful utility as it enables you to securely wipe files, folders, or entire hard drives, allowing you to destroy sensitive information, or to safely sell, pass-on or throw away hard drives without having to worry about your data still being there.

Sadly while System Mechanic claims to "eliminate slowdowns, crashes, & freezes." in my experience it has made these events a lot more common and seems to cause more problems than it fixes. To be honest I can't find any real reason to recommend this software to you, and in fact I would actually recommend that you stay clear. While it has a few redeeming features such as the data recovery software it isn't worth the risk.

I commend the software developers for attempting to offer the user a feature packed quick fix solution for a range of common problems, but for me at least it hasn't worked. If it's system maintenance your after try TuneUp Utilities 2008, or better yet learn how to clean your own registry, use msconfig, and disk defragmenter.

For your reference I'm running Windows XP SP3, with an AMD Athlon X2 5.2 Processor, Asus Crosshair motherboard and 4Gb DDR2 RAM.

(I'm a reviewer on Amazon, and some my reviews are copied from there to dooyoo. Please feel free to check out my Amazon profile under my real name of Mr Andrew M Kerr.)

Summary: Thanks For Reading.

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