iolo System Mechanic Pro 6

[Rob Williams]

Personally, for a Windows Firewall I have always enjoyed McAfee. I wouldn't recommend SM6's just for the sake of the rest of the application being unstable. You may run into similar problems with the firewall... I am not sure.

Strange that ZA would slow down your PC though. I've heard of weird problems with it before, but nothing like that.

 

[madmat]

The Sys Mech. 6 Pro firewall is Kaspersky Anti Hacker. You can get it and Kaspersky anti virus from Kaspersky directly and forego the Sys Mech 6 Pro if you wish.

Personally I like Kaspersky's product quite a bit, it works very well and I never saw any sort of slowdown. One thing I did experience was Anti-Hacker would mistake Steam's server lookup as a DNS attack and shut my PC off from the 'net and I'd have to disable it.

 

[Unregistered]

Thanks!

I used to use McAfee years ago and liked it. Then I switched to Norton and now just feel like a change.

I would have automatically gone with McAfee but saw the news that they have a huge security problem with their programs.

I've never tried Kapersky. I just want to get the best "all inclusive" program for a "regular user" that won't interfere with my speed.

I'm a little limited because I use Firefox instead of IE and not all programs work with that. (I tried to download and install the suite my ISP provides free but it won't work with Firefox.)

Thanks for your comments. I'll check back later to see if there are any other ideas. (Normally, I would have no business being in this site, lol.)

 

[madmat]

Kaspersky works just fine with Firefox, used them together for the better part of a year with nary an issue.

 

[Unregistered]

System Mech 6

I installed the above last week and all seemed ok. In the last few days I noticed some heavy duty slowdowns when starting up an (any) application. For instance, Notepad took for ever to launch AND then more delay loading the text file. Through process of elimination I discovered the culprit to be SM6. Once I removed it everything was fine. In fact my PC is running faster than ever. Go figure....

 

[Rob Williams]

Great, another success story

I really hope to see SysMech 7 fix all of the problems that plagued 6. That was by far their worst release yet.

 

[espresso]

System Mechanic 7

Hello again from me after so much time!

I honestly doubt that anything is fixed with version 7. I have installed v7 trial and got disappointed from the start. The interface is disgusting, the whole thing looks pretty much like an internet page with links that lead to other sections of the application. I have noticed that everything else remained the same - the entire engine from v6.
I think v6 had been the one where started to make the wrong decions. It's not good old system mechanic anymore, it looks like some shiny addware application that offers you to fix some stuff in your PC but actually makes it slower and worse.
It's all messy when you start the application (like pilot's cockpit) with lots of warnings and alerts (as if you are about to crash).
To be honest I am afraid to try out all features in v7 since we all know that early versions of 6 had big problems that caused system crashes and stuff.

I don't like it. I'll keep using v6.

Can we expect a review on this site any time soon?

 

[madmat]

I honestly hadn't heard that 7 was out yet and as snowed under (not literally, I'm in a warm state) as I am right now I can say no review of it anytime soon, not from me. If it's basically the same engine as 6 and just a minor interface shake up I'd advise to avoid it unless you're planning to go the power user route and choose what to do and not do. The automated sections of 6 left me cold, 5 was much better IMO.

 

[Unregistered]

Don't upgrade to version 7!!!

I recently updated my license and saw that version 7 was out, so I would upgrade. Huge mistake. I have used SM Pro since version 5 and this was by far my worst experincce with it. Version 6 and version 7 seem to be the same program. They tried to dumb down the program for the average user, but IMO did a bad job. Things are hard to find now. Seems like the computer locks up more. Program is a huge RAM hog. I liked the V6 interface better. Also, the program does not appear to run under limited user accounts. I am going to play around a bit to see if I can get it working. Their tech support is worthless. Two of their "support" personel told me that I would have to change my limited user accounts to admin accounts so the program would work right. One guy told me that it is supposed to work that way since you don't want the regular users to be in the firewall or antivirus programs. This was the same idiot that hung up on me. They will feel the heat once MS Vista comes out. SM7 will fail miserably. We may not get a SM8 if they don't fix their problems and listen to their users.

That felt better. Needed to vent.

 

[Rob Williams]

Haha, wow. This sounds like a program I need to get a hold off. We've shrugged this program for a while. It's amazing how popular it actually is. Our 6 review was posted over a year ago, and nothing has changed!

iolo needs to get their stuff together. I think the first version I used was 4, and it was great. Not sure what happened.

 

[Timbo77]

System Mechanic 7 Pro review

Hello again from me after so much time!


I honestly doubt that anything is fixed with version 7. I have installed v7 trial and got disappointed from the start. The interface is disgusting, the whole thing looks pretty much like an internet page with links that lead to other sections of the application. I have noticed that everything else remained the same - the entire engine from v6.
I think v6 had been the one where started to make the wrong decions. It's not good old system mechanic anymore, it looks like some shiny addware application that offers you to fix some stuff in your PC but actually makes it slower and worse.
It's all messy when you start the application (like pilot's cockpit) with lots of warnings and alerts (as if you are about to crash).
To be honest I am afraid to try out all features in v7 since we all know that early versions of 6 had big problems that caused system crashes and stuff.

I don't like it. I'll keep using v6.

Can we expect a review on this site any time soon?

Hi,
I have just purchased SM pro 7 and it is awful. Having been a lover of SM6 I thought that for $69 I would upgrade to an all singing all dancing suite of tools that would keep my top flight pc in good shape but what a crock of merde (French). I agree that the interface is horrible and that it doesn't do half the things that it claims, I have also had more program crashes since it has been installed than ever. Three of my main concerns

1. whenever I boot up my pc SM 7 Pro tells me that I have registry problems even if I use it to fix them and then reboot without doing anything else, I always have registry problems.

2. What has happened in Search and recover 4? Search and recover 3 used to find deleted files and then allow me to terminate them at high speed, now if I have files that need terminating it takes eons...... Bad Bad!

I was interested to hear that files terminated this way are actually not terminated at all and can be recovered...... So my question is..... What the hell is the point of this program?

3. Customer Support is terrible. I have submitted two queries based on these problems and I have had one reply (auto generated) telling me to trudge my way through the Knowledge base and find the answer for myself).

I may have lost my money, but I am not going down without a fight. In my honest opinion this release is not worth the money and you should steer clear of it. I have had better results with Tuneup utilities 2007 (trial).
I will await the results of my last enquiry and if it resolves the issues, I'll stick with it, failing that I'll apply for a rebate.

 

[Unregistered]

Slow slow slow

Heya

Love what you want to do ................. Hate the foreeverness of it. I truly am amazed at how slow your program runs for each execution. I am gonna look elsewhere for a program where we dont have to watch the grass grow.

Sincerely,

Foreever waiting.

 

[Unregistered]

Dont bother

On second thought I dont have to be nice )

Dont bother buying this product whatever the version. They dont REALLY get it and I dont care to be a research sample )

On to other products. System Mechanic is NOT one of my future choices ever again.

Sincerely,

Disgusted.

 

[Unregistered]

System Mechanic 7

Bit of a waste of money.
I bought it to speed up my computer. What does it do? Places a new start up item which slows the computer right down when you first turn it on.
It is clearly doing an analysis, but I want to abilitily to do an analysis on demand.
I have made sure that Active Care is turtned off.

It says that the startup item is: "Part of System Mechanic from iolo technologies. The process monitors system settings to provide automated reports and scheduled maintenance. The process also checks for available application updates."

I asked iolo how to remove it, the computerised response was a waste of time.

You cannot remove it in System Mecanic > Manage System Configuration > Customise Advanced Windows Settings, although you can remove items from other manufacturers.

I did in the end remove it, using Reg Edit.

Now System Mechanic analysises just when I want it to.

 

[Unregistered]

I, too, would like to just use System Mechanic 7 "on demand" with no automated services. To disable its "automatic" mode, do I just delete the key in the register, or is something else required? SM7 has some nice tools and features, but the automatic scanning is a big bother and it gobbles system resources.

SMSystemAnalyzer.exe
HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MICROSOFT\WINDOWS\CURRENT VERSION\RUN

Thanks in advance -- Dick

 

[mark4man]

unregistered...

Could you please clarify #6 below (I'm running XP Pro; & could not find it...looks like an incomplete sentence to me...thanks):

Windows XP Professional

The Windows security vulnerability can be re-enabled by using the Local Security Policy MSC or by manually navigating to the Administrative Tools Control Panel Applet.

1. Click on the Windows Start button, select Settings and click on Control Panel.
2. Double-click on Administrative Tools.
3. Double-click on Local Security Policy.
4. On the left, under Security Settings, double-click on Local Policies, and then select Security Options.
5. On the right, locate and double-click on each of the following policy settings to ensure they are set to disabled.

Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts
Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares
Network access: Do not allow storage of credentials or .NET Passports for network authentication
Network access: Let everyone permissions apply to anonymous users

6. Select No access without explicit anonymous permissions under.
7. Restart the member computer or domain controller for the change to take effect.

Thanks again,

mark4man

 

[Merlin]

I gave up on programs like this, they took out much needed registry files, deleted my cookies for paying online and in duplicate files.....well it messed it all up. So, no more programs like this, I'll go into it myself and delete what I really needed to get rid of.

Merlin

 

[Unregistered]

Not happy with System Mechanic

Do you feel that your computer could run faster? Is it being held back by the endless junk piles lying around your hard drive? iolo is back once again, with their latest System Mechanic incarnation, which improves on the tried and trusted tools in the previous versions. Let's see how it stands up today.

After checking out the full review here, feel free to discuss it in this thread!

I have not noticed any increase in performance after downloading System Mechanic 08., I feel it was a waste of time and money.

 

[madmat]

Most likely was. '05 was much better than '06 and from what I've heard '07 was even worse. They had an awesome product in '05 and in an effort to make it more automated and comprehensive they made it worse. All the improvements were just more gilding that just eventually ended up detracting from the original product.