System Mechanic - up to 3 PCs

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.

I used to love this product and always recommended it to other. But Iolo has become a very deceptive company and product has seriously degraded.

The most upsetting recent addition is Iolos silent change in product licensing. YOU CAN NO LONGER USE THE PRODUCT AFTER 1 YEAR. Really, once you buy the software, you'll notice a box in SM that tells you how many more days before you have to repurchase a license. Really Iolo, you're doing this to your customer. That's too bad.

Now on to my experience (keep in mind, I'm and IT support guy):
- I've spent over 8 hours trying to fix what SM did to my system. I'm not saying it caused serious damage, but it's definitely not very friendly to Windows 7.
- I've spent a couple hours on the phone with Iolo's support and they have me editing my Registry and other really nasty stuff the average person should not be doing.
- After all this, I've learned there is stuff that Iolo is doing in the background that is crashing my computer and the only way around this is to completely remove System Mechanic.

C'mon Iolo, I just wanna run this thing once in awhile to clean up my system. You've totally over complicated it and turned a great product into a nasty one.

Finally, its really hard to find, but by default, Iolo is sending information about your computer to themselves. Its on by default and really hard to find out how to turn it off.

So, my recommendation is look elsewhere. This used to be a great company and great product but they've really turned pretty evil and the product has degraded.

Reading some of the reviews I was hesitant to purchase. I did finally buy it when it was bundled with network magic from liksys
(Network magic is so-so.I have installed it on 2 laptops and one PC (1 old but beloved acer single core 2 gb, one new dual core Toshiba laptop, and one HP dual core hard working much abused by multiple teens and 2 parent deskstop). The install was fast and the navigation is intuitive. I'm certainly not a geek or expert but I've been futzing with computers since the dinosaurs roamed the earth and Dos command codes had to be memorized. The menus give me a sense of control and security I haven't experienced with a computer in a long time. All 3 of my computers have improved their performance dramatically (although I'm skeptical about it being the advertised 300% improvement). While running the drive defragmenter it estimated 30-40 minutes to defrag a 750 GB hard drive but took 2.5 hours--not so bad really as I usually put this on overnight.The registry cleaner and optimizer worked fast and efficiently. It has a 1 click fix it all option for a complete computer "fix" that avoids that "should I really be checking all these boxes when I'm not sure what they'll do" kinda feeling. I couldn't be happier with the products performance across my 3 platforms. I'm buying another license to cover my 2 college age sons computers.Hopefully this will help slow down the every 1-1 1/2 year cry for a new laptop from them. It sounds like performance can vary but isn't this always the case with cmputers. I think with this product that this whole computer fad may just have a future.

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.

I have been using SM for nearly 5 years now. I first purchased it when my primary computer began acting sluggish -- it was in need of maintenance but I had no idea what. For me, SM was a god-send ... it breathed new life into an aging machine and allowed me to keep it up and running for 4 more years. I love the product so much that I've used the trial version on my elder parents' machines. I also use it on my DH's machine ... and he's an IT professional. I now have new machine, and one of my first installs was ... you guessed it, SM 9 for Win7.

That said, some words of advice when using SM.

--> Back-up your registry & system before the first install.
--> Check online for updates, especially after the first install.
--> Always, always, always back-up your system & registry before any major changes to you computer, including the ones that SM makes/suggests.
--> Don't use Active Care. Instead, use the individual tools or tool groups.
--> Make changes incrementally. Reboot after making a change & re-analyze for recommendations. Evaluate.
--> Before you make a change, do some research and understand a bit about what the change/fix is. Just because a program suggests a change/fix, doesn't mean that you should make it.
--> SM Standard is probably sufficient. I've previously owned SM Pro and never used the additional features. However, SM Pro is non-subscription pricing but SM Standard is yearly subscription (at least as of the last I checked).
--> Price the SM 3-PC license versions. I've found this to be one of the best values -- only problem, the clock on all the licenses starts ticking on the first install & activation.

That said, SM is a great all-in-one maintenance utility -- it's a worthwhile investment in your computer, and it just might improve your knowledge about PCs. That's what it's done for me.

Highly recommended!

I became a System Mechanic user way back when it was System Mechanic 3, and have loved it ever since. I have taught myself how to build computers by doing so, and SysMech was always there to help me keep my sometimes-not-so-well-designed pc's up and running smoothly. It covers a huge range of jobs, and has a clean, intuitive, and easy to use layout that gets me where I want to be w/a minimum of button clicking, and every tool and action is well explained, so that you always know what you're doing, what precautions to take, and how to revert back if necessary.

Over the years, I've strayed occasionally, but I always find my way back to SysMech for one simple reason: It does what it says it will do, and it does it well enough that the improvement is always huge. And all the while, it is simple enough that even the most computer illiterate person could be comfortable using it. I would recommend this product to anyone who needs a highly usable maintenance and repair utility that will grow apace to the technological improvements to the machines it maintains. SysMech installs easily, runs smoothly and with great stability, and comes w/very competent customer service, in the very rare event that one should need it. Now, if we could just convince the world that every new pc needs to come with a full version pre-installed....

First let me start out by saying my husband has a degree in Micro Computer Systems and I am an exIBMer of 10 years. My husband did a deep scan using System Mechanic and was given a result that said he needed to repair a start up problem. So regretfully he allowed it to go in and do a fix! He was never able to get back on his computer again until he had to reformat his hard drive and lose everything on there. THE Worst part was the customer help or lack of!!!!! We were told that a program engineer would have to be consulted and it would be about 3 days before they would get back to us. They never did, and when I tried to email them I would get stupid replies like go to start click and then choose control panel.....blah.....blah...blah. Can they not read!!! We can't even get into safe mode, your program has wiped out something in the start up program and we can't get passed looking at the bios info. Anyway, after a couple of ridiculous replies I told them not to bother any more that it was evident that they did not have the technical ability to handle the problem and they definitely weren't going to help us even though it was their problem. I wouldn't recommend this program to anyone. They have a lot of fancy graphics to make you think their progam is really doing something great. Now tell me after I do a check on my computer and it replies I need to do this and that I allow it to and then the next day I basically get the same you need to fix this and that again. It's just a bunch of junk. If you buy this program even after reading this, all I can say is please be careful.

Easy to set up and configure. The main tool of System Mechanic is easy to access on the main screen allowing you to run an analysis whenever you feel it's necessary, also you can easily repair all detected problems or choose what problems to fix individually. The best feature in this version of System Mechanic is the improved Activecare that has had its configuration options greatly improved. They have provided many options on how to schedule active care to run in the background, such as only between certain hours, or not to run if processor use is over a certain percentage. And best of all it does not use any system resources when running silently in the background. It's also a great value because it can run on 3 pcs with one licence. So I am able to run it on the other 2 pcs I take care of for my less computer savvy family members and it keeps their registries clean and temp files from overflowing without me having to check on them every week. As an added bonus it provides an assortment of tools to see your computers health like the hard drive status monitor I just found today. That brings me to System Mechanics only downside, many of the tools are buried in the menus and hard to find plus many details of what it finds in the scans are difficult to see unless you run that categories separate utility that goes more in depth on findings. But if you are willing to put some effort into digging through the menus there are lots of interesting utilities bundled in. Overall I think it's a great value for the cost and am happy they brought all these features together into one utility and allow you to have it run silently in the background and forget about it.

I have a computer that is just over three years old. It had gotten to the point to where you couldn't even sign on. I wasn't sure anything could be done with this computer but I bought System Mechanic and ran it. To my surprise the computer that I couldn't even sign on came to life and now works as good as it ever did. The product is easy to use and a miracle for my computer. I now have it installed on three computers that I own and am going to install it on my new computer as well. Great product and inexpensive compared to a new computer. I have told everyone I talk to that is having computer problems about this product. IT IS GREAT!!! Thank you System Mechanic.
Roger Hall

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'.