System Mechanic Reviewer's Comments

System Mechanic 7 from Iolo Technologies LLC is the "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award" winner. With loads of great features and excellent support, System Mechanic is strong PC utilities software. The overall price was the only thing that kept it from beating out Advanced System Optimizer for our number one spot. 

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Ease of Use:  

We found System Mechanic extremely easy to navigate; the program has seven intuitive categories (Home, Clean, Fix, Maintain, Optimize, Protect and Options); helpful icons with brief descriptions label each tool.

Ease of Setup:  

We experienced no complications while installing System Mechanic.

Maintenance/Diagnostics:  

System Mechanic offers a strong set of maintenance and diagnostic tools, including a Startup Manager and a Startup Guard, which helps you manage programs that start with Windows.

Other tools include One-Click Maintenance, an uninstaller program (which gives you power to delete all the remnants of uninstalled programs) and a device manager (which maintains all installed devices, hidden or connected).

System Mechanic also offers a Manage Running Processes tool, which is important for system maintenance and handy when dealing with spyware.

Repair/Recovery:  

System Mechanic comes with a customizable toolbar, a proficient Registry Cleaner (also customizable), a secure Delete Program tool, rollback capabilities and a Quick Status tool (which provides system statistics and an overview of files cleaned, repaired and so on).

A Search and Recovery tool allows you to recover data that has been deleted or accidentally erased from external digital devices, such as digital photos, digital video and sound files.

Optimization:  

System Mechanic offers hundreds of tweaks for your operating system, including: optimizing your Internet speed, viewing and setting limits on memory use and individual defrag of files, folders, the registry or the hard drive.

We read that some critics had concerns with System Mechanic's defrag capabilities, so we tested it ourselves. On older computers (3 years or more) we experienced some errors, system lockups, and long or incomplete scans. On newer computers there were almost no complications.

Feature Set:  

System Mechanic offers a spyware detector, a cookie manager, antivirus capabilities, and a good firewall-blocking 9 Elkern attacks (special UDP packets designed to execute malicious code) during our test period.

You also get an Internet Tracks Eraser, which keeps your Internet activities hidden from online thieves. 

Help/Support:  

Iolo Technologies provides plenty of help and support for System Mechanic. The software offers a built-in manual, Quick Help topics and a Tips and Hints section. Online, they provide a FAQs page, tutorials, a searchable knowledge base and email support. Iolo Technologies does not offer a toll-free support number.

Summary:  

Because of its massive feature set and exceptional support, System Mechanic 7 by Iolo Technologies is one of the strongest and most comprehensive PC utilities software programs available.