Product Description

System Mechanic, the #1 best-selling and award-winning PC Tune-up software, automatically repairs errors and fragmentation, cleans out clutter, and tunes up your PC -- so that it runs smoothly, reliably, and up to 300% faster! Features: Say Goodbye to PC Headaches Forever with System Mechanic’s 40+ tools and over 200 critical tests and repairs: Repairs Problems - With normal use PCs accumulate problems that cause annoying errors, crashes and freezes. Cleans Up Clutter - Without regular cleaning PCs are plagued by gigabytes of junk that waste precious drive space and memory. Plugs Security Holes - Security flaws let hackers, viruses and ID thieves gain access to your PC, resulting in theft and data loss.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #688 in Software
• Brand: IOLO Technologies
• Model: 8010311
• Released on: 2007-12-03
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2000, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .50 pounds

Features

• Fix and Speed Up Your PC ...Automatically!
• Makes your PC run like new again
• Fixes Registry errors, crashes & freezes
• Cleans up system-clogging clutter
• Boosts PC start time & web speed up to 300%

Customer Reviews

Not reliable enough and some "fixes" are dangerous
System Mechanic uses an unsigned disk access device driver (elrawdsk.sys) for its maintenance, and I wonder if that was one of the causes for a system breakdown that subsequently required a complete restore of my hard drive. The disk defragmentation is suspiciously fast, although my PC did seem faster. Internet Optimization appears to apply the same adjustments whether under XP or Vista, even though Vista has a completely rewritten TCP/IP stack. Spyware detection on my system led to a false positive. The Iolo website has no technical information about how it works nor an online support forum, which makes it difficult to know if it's actions are safe. ActiveCare will run only after 5 minutes of idle (minimum), where it would be better to run in the background at low priority (especially in Vista with its improved I/O prioritization), if automatic maintenance was the key.

There are plenty of free alternatives which are safer: Wise Registry Cleaner, NTRegOpt, JkDefrag, ScanDefrag, FosiX Lite, File Shredder, Belarc Advisor, Tweak UI (XP) or WinBubbles (Vista), Seconfig (XP), SpeedGuide.net TCP/IP Optimizer (XP), and CCleaner.

Quick, Easy, and Efficient
I don't write a lot of reviews either, by the way, I find comments like that irrelavant to consumers so forgive me for even posting it. I have operated Iolo's System Mechanic for just over a year now. I had no problems loading it. I have no problems using it. I have no problems with the way it updates. I know just enough about my computer to know that if I start tinkering with it, in an attempt to make it run faster, I can potentially do more harm than good. I can honestly say my computer runs better because I use it. I recently renewed my subscription for two more years and was pleased with the ease of my renewal process. During the renewal process Iolo provided me with pertinent information regarding my account, on the screen, before I had to perform a deep search for it. Oh, I can still operate my previously installed firewall and virus protection with System Mechanic.

Gets the job done
System Mechanic helped speed up my system. Fair enough- it does what it's supposed to.
One of the issues I had with this product is that it would not let me run the program without first registering it. I understand the logic behind this, but disagree with it. I bought this because one of my pc's was running very slow. It took about 20-25 minutes to start up and forget about installing programs! So, here I am trying to to install a program that will not work on my darn pc because it's not registered. But I could not register it because my PC kept crashing. It was very frustrating. They should allow a clean install and repair once before they make you register or look for updates.
If you have problems connecting to the internet or your system is really, really slow or has intermitten crashes, this may not be the program for you. It does what it is supposed to do, but if you can't load it, what's the point?
So finally got it installed after a headache or two (started PC in safe mode, worked some kinks out myself, etc) and I was able to start appreciating the software (I'll pretend the two drinks it drove me to drink had nothing to do with it).
It had to run system analyse three times, but it did clean up my registry entries, found a spyware program that ad-aware and even symantec missed, and fixed some memory problems I was having . My system is much better than before. Startup is faster and I no longer crash. I had that four year old computer sitting in a corner for about 6 months gathering dust. System mechanic helped get it working again.
One of the things it does not do is prevent problems from happening in the first place. It promises ActiveCare technology that 'detects and repairs problems in the background without any interference or drain on resources'. Not true- at least not for me. If it does, I haven't figure that part out yet. I could be running the pc and get no warning messages all day, but if I run a 'system analyze', it will always find a few problems to fix.

I would recommend this product because it does help get your system in better shape. It works. I've had it for about three weeks and doing a few system sweeps here and there, my system has been a lot more stable. I'm hoping a memory upgrade will help out too. I just wish the makers of this product were a little more efficient with the initial install and that it had (better) real time system 'repair prevention'.