subject: Preventive Maintenance With Windowscare [print this page] As a chap who has previously repaired computers professionally, I am sure you can appreciate that I'm rather sceptical when it comes to people fixing their own computers when a problem occurs; in my opinion unless you know exactly what you are doing it is best to contact a professional. I have found previously, a little bit of information in the wrong hands can be a dangerous combination and especially messing with your Operating System!
That having been said, I do certainly see the need for applications that can provide an element of automated system repair and preventive maintenance and one such application I recently discovered called Advanced WindowsCare fits that bill nicely.
The version of the software that I will be reviewing today is the free personal edition; however there is also a $29.95 professional version. Compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista, both versions can be obtained from www.iobit.com, and with the personal edition weighing in at only 6mb it shouldn't take two minutes to download. Once installed the level of automation is quite scary; simply click the scan button and the application will look inside your computer and will categorise your problems in to the following areas:
Spyware - Gives details of detected Spyware and Adware on your machine; even though there are numerous programs that do the same, one more can't hurt surely?
Security Defence - Identifies areas of your system that can be 'immunised' to prevent possible security compromising software from being installed on your machine.
Registry Fix - The Windows registry is a huge file that contains thousands of Windows settings and parameters. This section will highlight any entries that are invalid or incorrect.
System Optimisation - Any areas of your system Operating System identified as being inefficient by the software will be listed in this category.
Startup Manager - I have in the past explained the importance of minimising the amount of unnecessary software which launches on system startup and this application makes removing it extremely simple.
Privacy Sweep - This section lists the activity history and tracers on your PC. The removal of such nasty software will dramatically improve how secure your PC is and evade potential scorning by your other half if you've been browsing sites they would not approve of.
Junk Files Clean - Windows stores a surprisingly large amount of rubbish that can quickly and easily identified and removed with no ill effects.
Any changes planned by the program will be ok'd with you before it proceeds but looking over them all would take a fair old chunk of time. For example my laptop I bought just over a month ago had 40,000 potential problems detected; however 33,000 of them were possible system immunisations. Being a trusting kind of guy I just clicked on repair and let WindowsCare do its thing. I am happy to report that thus far I have had no reason to think its judgement was out, but it may be worthwhile remembering that the program allows you to back up your system settings before making any changes then you can simply restore them if you have any issues.
I don't think there's really a huge amount left to say about this application. It installed easily, it worked efficiently and it removed countless potential problems from my system in a matter of minutes. I would certainly recommend downloading and installing this fantastic piece of free software - if you are currently having problems with your system it could solve them, and if you're not then it could prevent them.
