System Mechanic 9.5
System Mechanic 9.5
Reviewed March, 2010
What’s It Do?

System Mechanic 9 cleans, defrags, and repairs the Registry and eliminates Registry bloat; accelerates PC startup 19 ways; defrags and recovers orphaned RAM; boosts Internet speed; completes low-level drive defrag; turns off unused background programs; optimizes PC settings; intelligently eliminates unneeded startup programs to start Windows up to eight times faster; and, etc.


Does it do what it promises?

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request: Mostly yes, in that it performed all of its functions and tweaks well on my system. No, in that the website offers the "promise of the extreme": for example the "overview" page for System Mechanic has a headline "Start Windows up to 8 times faster". While that might be achieved on some systems, I saw nothing like that on mine.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: yes, it does perform the tasks it advertises; but any noticeable benefits will depend upon the condition of one's system.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: Yes, it performed all the functions it purports to be able to do during my testing. The Pro version includes anti-virus, anti-spyware, a file scrubber and an undelete utility in addition to the regular maintenance tools in the basic version.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Yes, it can deal with all of the "top 5 performance drains" listed on the iolo Web site; however, I would caution that users should check each of the individual tools first, and define the scope that each one should be given. Doing so could avoid nasty surprises that might occur by simply installing the program and running the "PC Accelerator" right away -- however great the temptation may be to do so. It would be wise to look at the tools individually first, and see what the program actually proposes to do before carrying out the recommended "Repairs."

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: No. The program did not "make [sic] your PC run like new again;" it did not "boost internet speed;" and it did not "accelerate" my PC at all, let alone "up to 300%." While the program's individual tools work for the most part, the over-inflated claims of how this program will improve your PC are the stuff of gimcrackery and P.T. Barnum.


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request During the early part of the installation process, it checks for and downloads critical updates automatically. Use per the installation license is limited to one computer and only one backup copy is permitted. This is an unrealistic restriction, given the need to make multiple system backups for the protection of one's data in the current era. The license agreement has a large volume of disclaimers and, most disturbingly, there is a large section where the user agrees to hold harmless and indemnify the company and a host of others.

Developers of System Mechanic Responded: Every copy of System Mechanic works on up to 3 PCs. This is clearly stated on our website, on all our boxes, in our reviewer's guide, and was also clearly mentioned in my email including the review copies / activation codes for the reviewers.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: Yes, the 18.1MB downloaded exe file installed without any problems or conflicts. Registration was very easy to accomplish utilizing a copy/paste of the usual long license key. It should be noted that System Mechanic is timeware in that the license is valid for only three years

Developers of System Mechanic responded: The software will work indefinitely, so it is not timeware. However, some of the program's features, which rely on constant updates in the form of iolo's exclusive Tune-up Definitions, will cease to be updated when the service plan expires and thus might not remain equally effective.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: Yes and No. The first time I installed it, all went well. The program worked as expected and I used it for several months this way after I had set up all the various parameters and tasks I wanted to perform. I had significant issues after the attempted update. It appeared to install correctly but it would not run. The program claimed to be "missing" some critical component. While attempting to uninstall it, my computer crashed and spontaneously rebooted. I went through the installation routine a second time. It appears to have been a temporary local glitch that did not recur. Upon launch after reinstalling, it updated its definitions and appeared to be functional. I suppose I may have inadvertently blocked one of the startup routines it requires. I very carefully monitor every install to avoid getting unintended startup items placed into the Registry.m2

The license authorizes one user/one computer.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Again, every copy of System Mechanic works on up to 3 PCs. Feel free to verify this on our website, our boxes, reviewer's guide, or my original email.

And the program does not allow use over a network without a licensed copy for each computer on the network. iolo "monitors" the use of the software to "avoid unlicensed use". It "phones home" about one's computer and operations performed but claims not to share the specific information without the user's consent.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: User consent is requested to submit data to iolo anonymously. No information is shared at any point with any 3rd parties.

It does however "aggregate the data" and may share that aggregated personally unidentifiable information without consent.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Once again, no data is ever shared with any 3rd parties. Furthermore, the user can always choose not to have this data submitted.

Updating, when offered, requires agreement to a new EULA. The program with not run if one blocks the startup items needed to monitor the installation that System Mechanic wants to install.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Yes. It is a standard windows installation, which allowed me to put the program files and shortcuts in the locations of my choice. There are two services that will be installed with System Mechanic and run when the computer is started. As I knew before I installed this program that such items would be added to the start-up procedure, I allowed them, but would prefer that there be some warning and explanation of what these services do and why they are needed on my computer. Entering the Registration Key is a simple copy-and-paste operation.

The licence allows the user to install the program on only one computer, and it must be used only by the person with the licence; otherwise, the EULA (End Users Licence Agreement) is a fairly standard document containing the usual warnings and disclaimers.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Again, every copy of System Mechanic works on up to 3 PCs. Feel free to verify this on our website, our boxes, reviewer's guide, or my original email.

Whenever I started System Mechanic, it did a check for updates. In the "One-click" style of System Mechanic, a single click will download and install the new program. It finds the folder where the program is installed, as well as the shortcuts in the Start Menu.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: Yes. While a fairly sizeable program at 18.17MB, it downloaded in a matter of seconds on a moderately fast broadband connection. A nice touch and something I have not seen before, it asked if I would like to keep a copy of the installation package on my computer and where I would like it filed. It further asked before placing shortcuts or icons on my desktop, and contained no offers of third-party software to be installed by default. It auto-updated before the final installation and registration was a quick copy and paste. Overall, it was a smooth and fast download, installation, and registration. There is a standard EULA regarding copyright protection and liability; however, there is the most generous licensing agreement I have seen with any software. The license allows of the program on three computers and for three years. This does make the $49.95 price tag much more reasonable and is highly commendable!


Good points.

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request In contrast with other "system tuneup suites" I have seen, System Mechanic 9 gives good, detailed information and control about the individual items it proposes to change. While one has the option of selecting a group of related items and allowing System Mechanic to make "en masse" repairs, decisions can be made on individual fixes.

The "Safety Net" feature gives the user another desirable level of control. It allows one to undo groups of previous changes should it be found that an adverse result had occurred. This does not allow the granular control of individual changes as is possible when the original tweaks were done, but its "shotgun approach" should allow a user to return their system to its previous state.

The "Help" system is smart in that clicking on "help" from a section of the program opens the help menu to the relevant portion of the help documentation. This seems basic, but I'm surprised at how many programs do not do this.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: System Mechanic is a collection of utilities (which System Mechanic calls "tools") designed to clean, maintain, adjust, and fix one's PC. Learning the basics in how to use these tools is easy with video tutorials that are easily accessible from the first screen that opens when one starts System Mechanic. More details are available in the help file of the program. These guides and the easy to navigate user interface makes learning how to use System Mechanic simple considering the vast number of tools that it contains.

I like System Mechanic's flexibility for both novice and advanced users. The default automatic use of some of the major tools allows a user without any knowledge of the function of these tools to use these tools safely, knowing there is a safety net (undo) if he doesn't like the outcome. I tested this function and found that it did undo those monitored changes; however, care should be taken as the changes made by some of the tools is not monitored and there is no "undo" for those changes.

It would make this review too lengthy to relate each tool's function in detail, so I'll discuss the major tools in detail and summarize the other tools.

System Mechanic's Dashboard Feature is an easy, quick way to determine the status of one's system. Once cleaned and adjusted, a user can use this quick interface to see if any new problems have popped up. Not everything System Mechanic detects is a problem or unnecessary. System Mechanic allows the user to customize such needed or wanted items so it will no longer detect it and thus reflect in its Dashboard rating. Monitoring the Dashboard over time, I was surprised to see how quick Registry errors occurred.

System Mechanic's Registry cleaner is very good. I compared the Registry errors that System Mechanic detected to several other Registry cleaners that I consider very good. System Mechanic detected more errors than any other cleaner I tested which resulted in a deeper clean. I inspected each Registry error detected and did not find any false detections. System Mechanic does make a backup of changes and has an undo function which I consider a must have for any Registry cleaner.

System Mechanic Defragmentation utilities cover complete defragmentation including boot files and the Registry. While defragmentation will improve the speed performance of a system, the amount of speed performance increase seen will be based upon how fragmented the system is. The average user seldom installs software or hardware that causes the boot files to become fragmented, so after the initial perk from defragmenting the boot files, little performance improvement is achieved from regular boot file degramentation.

The NetBooster is a tool that changes settings in the Registry that are customized to one's system and Internet connection. I already had manually made these ideal settings for the best performance and speed. I was happy to see that System Mechanic's selection for these settings were identical to my manual selection, indicating that the NetBooster does indeed make the correct changes for the best performance and speed for one's Internet connection.

The best jewel of System Mechanic's vast array of tools is Drive Medic and the Emergency CD. One of the first things a user of System Mechanic should do is to make the Emergency CD. This CD will boot up on a non-booting system to allow Drive Medic to repair problems and make the system bootable. I tested this on my test drive by making that drive unable to boot (missing a required boot file). I was able to repair the problem and have the drive booting in a matter of minutes. This is a very good tool to have in one's toolbox.

Many of the tools utilize Windows utilities to make changes. The System Mechanic interface to these functions makes these choices available to the average user who has never used these tools.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: iolo has been making System Mechanic for a long time. I have used it personally for many years. It seems to be a very solid and useful program. It provides several methods of maintaining one's computer. It can be set to do any or all of the maintenance tasks it provides automatically or the individual tools can be used to perform each function as needed. Many of the processes can be either automated or may be used to dig down into the system as far as desired to handle individual problems on a case-by-case basis. I appreciated this flexibility that allowed me to make choices. It also has the ability or set up a "one-button" operation to handle a preconfigured list of tasks to perform. This is called "ActiveCare". I was happy to see that all of the tasks in the ActiveCare section are disabled on startup and can be individually selected at the user's choice. I think this is a smart move on iolo's part. Far too many programs I work with and install for testing purposes have "preselected" options where the developer makes the decision about what is needed. I prefer to make my own choices.

During my testing I used System Mechanic's dashboard scan to determine existing problems on my computer. It showed 25 security vulnerabilities, 384 Registry problems and 273 MB of "system clutter". To correct this, System Mechanic has three options: "Repair security vulnerabilities now", and "Start repair security flaws wizard" that allow inspection and repair of security vulnerabilities on a case-by-case basis and "Hide this problem" hiding it for three days, seven days or permanently should one not wish to make any changes.

After performing any repairs it recommended, the program presents you with a "Tests and Repairs Summary" that tells you what was repaired and what sections of the registry "Passed" muster. NOTE: a system restart is required after some registry repairs.

There is also a checkbox you can select to automatically repair security vulnerabilities with a function called ActiveCare, which is a way to set up a series of tasks that System Mechanic will perform automatically.

The last tab on the applications main screen is called "Reports". It offers two functions: "Intellistatus" which lists total capacity and available free space of all connected drives, as well as the status of the system memory both free and total; and, a listing of startup programs broken down into tabs labeled: Necessary, System, Unknown, Optional and Dangerous. Also on this page is an Internet speed test that will check current speed and offers to optimize the computer's settings if necessary.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Some time ago I installed System Mechanic on an older computer that I use for a number of odd jobs and trial programs, as I do all of my work on another computer. The old work-horse needs to be on all day, for it also operates the shared printers used by other members of the family from their own locations in the house. Although I had not consciously set System Mechanic to start-up when I turn the computer on, I notice that it still does regular mini-checks for junk files and other fluff that would normally be accumulating on my computer. I was pleased to see that I did not have to have the full suite of tools turned on, running and using system resources in order to do this basic maintenance.

The opening screen presents a beginning step: a Quick Analysis that should take only a couple of minutes, or a Deep System Analysis, which should take 5 - 7 minutes.. My C:\ drive -- the one with the Windows "System Files" and program files is 35 GB in size, so I ran the "Deep System Analysis" right away. This was completed inside the 7 minutes, including a scan of the hard disk itself for errors. When the scan is completed, there is a listing of the existing problems from which can be selected the ones for repair, or in the spirit of the "One-Click" system, the user can choose to "Repair All." It is at this point that I began to have some problems -- please see "Weak Points" below.

System Mechanic has a "Safety Net" feature that allows one to undo any of the changes that the program has made on repair. By default, all the Undo options are turned on, except the "Free Up Drive Space Tools" (Junk files cleaner). That means that if something happens during the System Mechanic repair process, the computer can be brought back to its previous state.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: System Mechanic is one of those all-in-one utility programs that cleans and tune-ups one's computer as well as does the laundry and waxes your car (well, almost.: ) Over the years I have become leery of such programs because not only by trying to do so much they actually did little well, but also worse, they all too often took a well running PC and made it unstable and sometimes unusable. Since System Mechanic has been around for more than 12 years however, I hoped that my fears and apprehensions would be unfounded. Unfortunately, they were not. While some basic cleaning tools worked well-tools I might add that are all available for free elsewhere and cleaning functions that can all be accomplished from within the Windows operating system-this is a software that is unneeded by an expert and too potentially dangerous for a novice for my recommendation.


Weak points.

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request One of the first things I noticed upon installation and initial analysis was that my history and earned privileges on an online Adobe Flash-based game were reset to "zero". This may have been due to script blocking changes under System Mechanic's "Fix Security Vulnerabilities" section.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: If the user ran the Privacy Cleaner tool, it may have cleared a cookie which the game was using to track scores.

System Mechanic's graphic interface is somewhat inconsistent. In order to find more details in some areas, one has to press on a down arrow within a box. In others, this requires clicking on a "+".

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: Many of the tools in System Mechanic are very powerful in the changes that they can make. Some changes are not monitored so there is no undo. System Mechanic caused several of my programs to stop functioning by halting services System Mechanic felt unnecessary or a safety risk. I was able to repair some of the programs by restarting the required service, but could not repair all. It would have been easier to undo System Mechanic changes if there was a log of what had been changed or an undo file to run.

The firewall monitoring function of System Mechanic did detect my Zone Alarm Pro firewall being present on my system, but failed to correctly report that is was active (which it was). This resulted in a low security status on the Dashboard and an incorrect warning that the Zone Alarm firewall was inactive. Reanalyzing did not get System Mechanic to recognize that the Zone Alarm firewall was active.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: System Mechanic relies on the information security products report about themselves to Windows Action/Security Center. 99 times out of 100, the security product is not reporting its status correctly, or the information coming from Windows is out of synch. There is a feature to "Turn off anti-malware monitoring" and "Turn off firewall software monitoring" if a user does not want System Mechanic's diagnosis of their security software protection affecting their dashboard status.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: As with any program of this type, it should be used with care. It does have the capability of causing problems if one doesn't pay attention or really does not understand the effects of the changes.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Once the "Dashboard - Analysis" has been done, the user has the option to Repair the problems that it lists. However, at this point, one must take a leap of faith that all will be well if either option is chosen: Repair Selected (in which case, those problems for repair are selected) or Repair All. What I could not find here -- and which I believe is a glaring omission -- is the possibility of seeing the details of the problems listed

Developers of System Mechanic responded: This is possible for all problems noted, by clicking on the drill-down menus.

Although most of us will not, for example, examine the Registry Entries that Registry Cleaners would normally fix for us, all the programs that I have used will at least give me the chance to look before I decide to "Fix" or "Clean." Junk file cleaners will also let me see the files that it has selected before trashing them. In fact, not having that option led me to the difficulty I describe in the next paragraph. System Mechanic tells me that I have "unnecessary" start-up items, but I cannot see what they are. As I have examined all the start-up items with other programs, I really do not know what System Mechanic will turn off or delete. It tells me that the Registry has never been backed up, but that is simply not true: perhaps it means that I have not backed up the Registry with System Mechanic, but that is not what it says. It mentions that I have 730 mb of system clutter -- but I find that to be very doubtful. Unfortunately, I cannot see what they are, so I cannot find out if this is accurate or not. (Note: I later found this all to be files that were already in the Recycle bin, so this warning was somewhat ingenious.)

Although System Mechanic does have some safety features built into it, I ran into problems by just installing the program, and doing what I think most people would do. I clicked on Analysis, saw that the computer was in "Poor Health" so told System Mechanic to "Repair All" . Unfortunately, I lost some data-files that would seem to be junk files to most junk-cleaning programs. I was lucky because System Mechanic did its clean up late at night, just before the computer shutdown. Since the program that uses those rather unusual data files is one of the first ones that I call up at the beginning of each day, I immediately discovered that my information was missing. Due to a robust backup system, I was able to recover it with only a small amount of panic and worry. However, I took the lesson that I had better explore System Mechanic a bit more carefully before simply giving it carte blanche. The Safety Net which is built into System Mechanic did not help recover those files, for the "Undo" feature for this part of the program, unlike all the others, is turned off by default.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: The most attractive function of this software program is its automated functions. Upon its initial use you are required to run a "quick" or "deep" automated analysis of your entire system after which a graphic "dial/"dashboard" gives you a bill of health: "poor," "fair," "good," and so on, with the option to simply repair all problems it found to improve the rated health of your system. The problem is that if you click the "Repair All" you are never told what was repaired other than some broad generalities such as "Optimized Internet Speed." It does not, however, tell how it optimized Internet speed, i.e. what system changes were made, and this is the potential danger. There is an option to run each of the tools manually after doing the initial analysis and if doing so you can find some specifics of what each tool wants to do and them makes informed choices of what you wish to allow; however, as a reviewer I wanted to test the function most likely to appeal to the novice so I after being presented with a laundry list of things wrong or needing changed or needing cleaned, and a rating of "Fair," I clicked "Repair All." I was surprised by this list and rating as I keep my PC in excellent shape. After finishing its "work," the program said it needed to reboot my computer to which I agreed. And now the fun starts! Besides taking forever to reboot, the first thing I noticed was that my AOL software would no longer initialize. No matter what I did, the AOL software would load but not initialize. Next I found that several file associations had been removed and that I could no longer open files using the associations I had previously set. I also discovered two programs that would no longer work correctly. Not only had programs and my file system been damaged but my computer was unstable, taking much longer to reboot, load times for Internet pages had become remarkably slow-as if on a dial-up connection, there were missing critical system files. There is an undo function hidden in the SafetyNet tab but does not allow you to bring back one item at a time and when I tried to restore or "undo" the previous operation all was not returned to as it had been. In fact, it was only because I had set my own System Restore point was I able to "undo" the changes/damages that the program had made. It was only upon running the program a second time and, rather than clicking "Repair All," examined each individual tools findings could I see some of the reasons for the problems. For one thing the program had removed AOL from the Trusted Zone in Internet Explorer to the Not Trusted zone. It has also removed two critical services necessary for AOL to run. It seemed to have made rather generic changes to internal Internet connections such as Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) settings that are inappropriate and are too high for use with many ISP's such as AOL. There were also several Registry entries for AOL and other programs that I used which it deemed as unneeded or superfluous and which broke programs by their deletion. So while this is enough to make me uninstall a program and say no more, there is more:

point It installs two services in Windows services that are set to automatic and therefore run in the background at all times. These cannot be disabled from within the program's configuration options, and even when reset to manual, the service identified as "Iolo System Service" resets the Windows service to automatic each time the program is run.

point There is no way from with the program's configuration option to disable the Active Care function running in background.

point Each time the program tried to auto-update it would reach 100% of the download, show 1 second remain, and then freeze. I could only shut down the program through Task manager.

point The Registry tool claims to "search for problems and unoptimized settings" but I could not find a single instance where it changed in settings in the Registry unless, by "changing a setting" implies removing a Registry entry or key.

point The program uses an excessive amount of computer resources: 80MB of Ram and runs the CPU at between 45% and 100% depending on the function being used.

point The Deep System Analysis takes an hour or more and not the minutes indicated. Furthermore, it cannot be canceled once started.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Actually, there is only one portion of the Deep System Analysis which cannot be cancelled: the user is warned about it ahead of time and given a 15-second window to skip it.

point The program seems unable to recognize such common antivirus programs such as AVG, or Avast. On the other hand I got a green checkmark for being successfully protected by Avira anti-virus when I only use it as a manual scanner and not as real-time protection.

point The RAM memory optimization tool simply swaps out the page file, actually making the computer operate slower, not faster. This is an old trick long ago debunked.

point The disc defragment tool is extremely slow; much slower than the built in Windows tool, and is not as thorough as the free Auslogic program.

point The hard drive analysis/repair tool is more or less the Windows chkdsc tool operating from the Windows DOS command line.

point It lacks enough detail as to how it is accomplishing some of the repairs or optimizations and asks for far too much blind trust in the program.

point The Graphic User Interface (GUI) is not intuitive and important functions such as the aforementioned "Undo" are hidden under obscure tabs

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Actually, all "undo" functionality is available from one (and only one) location: the SafetyNet link on the red toolbar running across the top of the user interface.

point The program was extremely difficult to uninstall. Even after using aggressive uninstallers (Revo and jv16) to remove left over fragments in the Registry as well as manually cleaning the Registry and removing left over files, I had to use a Microsoft tool to remove the two services that remained in the Windows Services Applet. This also is a sign of a program with poorly and sloppily written code.

point Support is virtually non-existent. There is a FAQ, a Knowledge Base, and Demos on the Web Site as well as a support ticket process for contacting support; however, that process seems worthless. I contacted support four times. The first time they gave me a standard boilerplate response from the Knowledge Base, which did not solve the problem, and the other three support ticket requests for support remained, unanswered. This alone would prevent me from recommending the program.

This is, in my opinion, a dangerous program-one far more likely to cause problems than cure them. The back end clean-up tools that do work are all available as freeware, or the same processes can be accomplished from within the Windows operating system. As a result, my recommendation is to stay away from this program.


Developer's Web site.

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request The iolo Web site is dedicated primarily to sales and promotion.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: The iolo Web site is easy to navigate with drop down menus available on all pages. The Knowledge Base seems to be very limited, but there is online email support. The Web site appears straightforward with the exception clearly pointing out the license renewal requirement until one is well into the purchase phase.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: The home page was a bit cluttered but it was not too hard to find the information I was looking for. The System Mechanic product page was a little better since it focused on only the one product. It displayed a section in the middle with tabs featuring Overview, "How It Works", Comparison, Reviews, Testimonials, a page of Demo screen casts that show how the different functions work and a final tab called "Learn" that explains iolo's "Intelligence-based" PC Tune-up system works by capturing information from "millions of PCs" world wide to fine tune the various signatures for System Mechanic subscribers.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Although iolo offers several products, System Mechanic seems to be the flagship program. It is easy to navigate to different parts of the site, and they publish some interesting information there. One section that intrigued me is iolo Labs, where can be found reports on some of their research. The "Search Program Database" was disappointing in that the search for several files returned no results.

I found the site to be cluttered and far too busy. It has the gaudy appearance of the flyers from the large chain stores that go from my mailbox to the recycle bin. In fact, nine warehouse-type chains are listed right across the middle of the home page -- advertising, I suppose, as none of them are clickable. Overall, the site did not impress me very much.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: The Web site, while full of excellent information about the program, has too many exaggerated claims, hyperbole, and obviously inflated sales pitches to be truly credible. It is also busier than it need be with snippets of supposed but unverifiable customer testimonials and references to, no doubt only positive, reviews.


Other comments.

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request I was uncomfortable that iolo saw fit to include a 15 page "reviewer's guide" along with their license code. If the documentation is good enough for a user, it should be good enough for a reviewer, and vice versa. I don't need to be led by the hand to find the good things to write in a review.

The only area of this package that I found questionable, and would appreciate the company's comments on, is the "Fix Security Vulnerabilities" section. I declined to make most of the changes in file associations recommended there because of a concern about making my system so secure that it becomes crippled. For example, the recommendation was to change JavaScript files to open in Notepad rather than to execute. While this would prevent malicious code from running, it will also stop friendly files of the same type from doing the same.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: System Mechanic's are very powerful and a user should understand that some changes made by System Mechanic could result in undesirable results. Some of these changes cannot be undone by System Mechanic. After my testing, I had to load my backup image to correct the problems caused by some of System Mechanic's changes that were not monitored and thus had no undo within the program.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: I found System Mechanic to be quite useful and easy to use. It provides a lot of useful tools under one hood and is pretty easy to use. It is from a well-established company that has been in this game for a long time and is well respected.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: Since System Mechanic is a general all-in-one program, it contains a number of tools that duplicate the work of other programs specializing in one feature or another. For example, I already have an excellent Registry Cleaner that I use on a scheduled basis, so I do not need System Mechanic's "Registry Compactor"

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Cleaning the registry and compacting it are mutually exclusive optimizations. One is not a substitute for the other.

I also have an excellent program to defragment my drives, so I do not need the "DriveAccelerator" of System Mechanic. I also keep a careful eye on the programs that run when I turn the computer on and one of my pet peeves is programs that install themselves into my start-up group without informing me and asking for my permission. I did run the Start-up Optimizer and EnergyBooster, but did not take any of the recommendations proposed by System Mechanic. In fact, I was a bit surprised by the suggestion that I turn off the Window's Automatic Updates I have Windows set to check automatically, but I always look at what is recommended, then decide which items to update and which ones to ignore.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: The reviewer might have misunderstood the suggestion. EnergyBooster gives PCs an instant turbo-boost by using Tune-up Definitions to safely identify and temporarily turn off non-essential background programs. It offers raw performance for gamers, video and sound engineers, artists, web designers, stock traders, and other serious computer users.

To achieve that turbo-boost, EnergyBooster presents a list of "non-essential" background processes to turn off so you can temporarily free up resources for a resource-intensive task. The processes are turned off temporarily - until you resume them from EnergyBooster, or restart Windows.

System Mechanic does not show me the details of the repairs that it will do if I tell it to proceed. Perhaps most people simply do not want to know, and just assume that the program will do their computer no harm. It may be that the safety net is enough to repair most damage, or allow people to recover from changes that they are not happy about. Like the other parts of the program, it is kind of "all-or-nothing." It does or undoes the complete action which was undertaken by the tool in question, and does not allow for selective actions within that category. For example, if System Mechanic is asked to optimize Internet performance, it will make a number of changes to this part of the computer's operation. Since changed individual items cannot be seen, one must either undo all those changes, or none of them.

If it were not for this weakness, System Mechanic would be a good set of general maintenance tools. It is easy to use and it covers the main areas that will cause problems; however, without the ability to be more selective in the application of the repair and the undo functions, I am not able to recommend it.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: Surprisingly, this reviewer completely missed the drill-down parts of the Problems page.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: I was truly disappointed and not a little surprised to find such a highly touted program that has survived over 12 years to be more snake oil than substance in my opinion. One can hardly read a computer newsletter that does not extol the wonder of this program. Of course, it may be noted that System Mechanic is also an advertiser in most of these sources and/or offering discounted specials.

Developers of System Mechanic responded: FYI, iolo does not advertise in any computer newsletters, print or online publications, or on TV. We do advertise via Google, but that'd be hardly enough to convince all computer newsletters to praise the product, if it didn't in fact offer a rich array of tools and impressive performance improvements.

Finally, I also resent software developers who also try to sell me other of their programs on the main Interface of the program. System Mechanic promises a lot but asks for a lot of blind trust in return. Using System Mechanic, one has absolutely no assurance but the developer's that the automated processes won't remove necessary items, and if they do, or something goes wrong, trying to get help from support is nearly impossible.


Will you continue to use it?

Reviewer 1 - Name withheld by request Yes. While I generally have been disappointed with "do it all" program suites, I found System Mechanic 9 to be highly functional with its functions well described and well controlled down to the individual item level.

Reviewer 2 - Dana Cardwell: Yes, but only certain tools in System Mechanic.

Reviewer 3 - Dana Bostick: This is but one of many such applications I have available. I think I like its user interface better than others I have used. I'll probably keep this one installed and use it.

Reviewer 4 - Peter Royle: No.

Reviewer 5 - Mark Snyder: Absolutely not!

OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows XP Pro, XP Home

Back