Customer Reviews

System Mechanic 6 Professional

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(45)

 

 

I have used System Mechanic 4 for many years and like it. It cleans my registry, finds old shortcuts. Most importantly, it tells me what it is going to do before it does it.

System Mechanic 6 will do tons of stuff to your computer, but won't tell you ahead of time what it's going to do. It fixed 99 "security vulnerabilities" on my pc, without telling me what it was doing, or letting me choose which of them to actually fix. I have a firewall and virus protection that are updated, so I seriously doubt there were 99 things to fix. The program just bulldogs it's way through whatever it thinks needs to be done. After various programs stopped working, I had to undo all the System Mechanic 6 changes, reinstall some software, and finally get rid of System Mechanic 6. I think System Mechanic 6 is trying to make itself easier to use by sheltering the user from the intricacies of the program, but the result is a bloated program that tries to do too much, interacts with the user too little, doesn't do anything well, and will most likely break your pc.

Read the reviews of the 4 or 5 major system utilities (Systemworks, System Mechanic, Systemsuite, etc). Guess what? Depending on which review you read, they are all outstanding products, or they are all trash. Not a single product gets glowing reviews from everyone, and each product has lots of people who had major problems. What to do? Do what I did. Just try one until it works.

I have used Systemworks and System Mechanic on various computers over the years with pretty decent results. For the last couple of years I've used System Mechanic with absolutely no problem. I just bought a new computer, and one of the first things I did was slap a copy of System Mechanic 6 Pro on it. The results? Completely trashed my brand new computer. Not really a big deal since the computer is new and I didn't have much (any) time invested in new software installation. All my documents are on my old computer, so I lost nothing. I just did a complete disaster recovery and got back to normal.

The next thing I did was install the Systemworks 2006/Personal Firewall bundle. Guess what? Flawless installation. Have run all the diagnostics and checks. Absolutely no problems.

So what does this mean? If you try one of the system utilities and it trashes your system, just uninstall it, try to get your money back, then move on to another one. I am absolutely convinced that it is a total crapshoot as to which utility will work on your system. If you think about it, they all have about the same features, so the issue is not what they can do, but whether they are stable and will work on your system. System Mechanic didn't work for me. Systemworks does. Just the way of the world. If you tried to read too much into all of the reviews, you would never buy any software for your computer, because there are always horror stories from people who had their systems crashed.

Off topic, but as an aside, it's the same thing with other programs. I am into video editing, and trying to decide between Pinnacle and Roxio Easy Media Creator. Absolute horror stories from users of both products about how unstable these products are. So....I tried the Roxio product, it works, and its stable. Good enough for me!

l've used versions 4 and 5 for years. I was extremely disappointed with version 6. It is buggy and caused blg problems.

The startup function disables startup files inaccurately and automatically. Tech support was unable to help me reverse the damage because the reverse function doesn't work, according to tech support.

The security function prevented me from accessing my computer because it closed ports. Tech support could not tell me how to reopen the ports. Another reason the lack of a reverse function is a serious problem.

Tech support was unable to help me. Theyare obviously overwhelmed bc the program is so bad.

After getting nowhere with tech support, I solved most of my problems by uninstalling version 6. My private tech guy will solve the rest, I hope, next week.

This is a below a beta version program. Version 5 is great. Version 6 IS NOT READY for public consumption.

This program should come with a warning and a letter of apology. Do not use it if they give it to you for free.

Had version 5 which worked fine, upgraded to version 6 professional which turned out to be a big mistake !! It consistently reports "Speed" and "Fitness" needs to be repaired, even after I have the Syetem Mechanic (allegedly) make the repairs.. Also, when I run the "PC total care" it consistently hangs-up and freezes. In addition, Tech support appears to be working part-time, I never get a response to the problems I'm having. Another thing is that the :"Virus Protection" will not install with "Norton" installed on your computer..

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT!!!! Their technical support is NON-EXISTENT! I've put in at least 3 help tickets with them and none have been answered. I called them and all I got was the "press one for tech support." When I press one, I get a message that says to call the same toll free number I dialed that told me to press "one".... Horrible!!

***** CAUTION IF YOU OWN ADOBE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS ****** This piece of software erases key registry entries of Adobe's and the only way to correct it is to completely uninstall Elements and then re-install it (I had to work this out with Adobe) It is VERY VERY frustrating.

Within one week of installing the software, it told me that my one year was up and would not run the anti-hacker feature - again no reply from IOLO.

Even after running their anti-spy applet, I was getting the "winfixer" popups. Their software said I had no malware, spyware, etc... which of course was not true. I downloaded spysweeper and it found the winfixer and MANY others which it cleaned off for me.

In fairness, I think it does do a good job looking at you computer to see if there is any junk. I just don't know what it is erasing and my computer has not been running correctly since it "cleaned it"

I was a big fan of version 5 so I upgraded to version 6 without hesitation. Unfortuantely some of the "optimization" tools do anything but optimize your computer. In my case it appears to have disabled crucial software start-ups and deleted important registry entries. And although the manufacturer claims that these changes can be undone, they cannot.

Latest Update-- Running with absolutely no problems, after two weeks intensive use on the three computers in my home network, and by far the most effective and flexible of any cleanup utility I've tried. The careful preparation seems to have paid off.

I was somewhat leary about trying this out, because of some very negative reviews. But the people at ZoneAlarm recommend it, so I decided to give it a try. To minimize the chances of trouble, I uninstalled my prior version, System Mechanic Pro 5 and thoroughly cleaned my system (Dell Dimension 8400, 512MB memory, two 180GB hard drives in a RAID0 configuration, running Windows XP Pro SP2, ZoneAlarm, Kaspersky Personal Pro antivirus, and antispyware from ZoneAlarm and Microsoft), using VCOM System Suite 6. I performed a system and registry backup, using System Suite 6 and set a Windows checkpoint. I did a full backup onto a USB drive, using Norton Ghost 10. I then rebooted twice, disconnected from the Internet,closed every program in the System Tray that would close (firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, etc.), inserted the System Mechanic disk, exited from the startup screen, and explored the disk for any text or manual files. I read everything I could. I then reinserted the disk and let it run.

The system hung once during the installation. This was unexpected, but not unusual when installing complex programs-- I just rebooted and the installation picked up where it had left off. I checked to make sure that no firewall nor antivirus was being installed.

The installation completed. I rebooted twice, re-connected to the Internet (firewall and anti-virus were again active), downloaded and installed the update (version q) and gingerly started exploring the features. The instructions for the features could be easier to follow, but I concentrated on the individual sub-programs, avoiding the Total packages till I had a feel as to how it all worked.

Absolutely NO proublems and seems very stable. I wound up doing considerable cleanup on what was a reasonably clean system to begin with, and the sytem is now considerably faster than before.

Key Precautions: Start with a system in reasonably good shape. Do a full backup onto an external medium or USB hard drive. Make sure you've disconnected from the Internet and close everything you can. Do not install the program's firewall or antivirus unless you have already uninstalled any others that may be on your system. Install the update.

Version p I just downloaded is improved from the CD I bought on Amazon when 6 first came out. Blue screen of death I got as soon as I installed 6 (each of 3 times) hasn't come up with version p. Accepting repair recommendations no longer results in repeated notices to repair -- everything 6 rates in my computer shows up "good" now. 6's making repairs but not giving any information about what it has repaired continues, and is unacceptable. After getting no useful Iolo tech response for a month, I got a good one within hours after posting a review this replaces. I still want an update that gets 6 to show what it's repairing.

I've used SM4 and SM5 and liked what they could do for me so i was glad to get SM6. What a mistake. Its big and bloated and at times made my computer unusable. I even tried disabling alot of the options but that didnt help. Dont waste your time with this software.

btw the way....1 star is way too high of a rating for this product

Installing SM6 on my Pentium 4,3.4 GHz computer running Windows Xp.

Maybe it's not System Mechanic,but ever since i purchased and
installed SM6 on my system,it has repeatedly crashed. SM6 constantly corrupts my MBR(master boot record) and MFT (Master File Table). IT also partitioned my drive with false data,SM6 reported to windows xp that my harddrive was bad.

Just to make sure it was SM6 doing the corruption,i formatted and re-install windowx XP 4 times,SM6 four times,and each time after re-installing SM6,in a couple of days my MFT and MBR were corrupted again.

I had to completely uninstall SM6,and format both my master and slave drives. I had to have Windows xp repair my drives. It is here where windows told me i had corrupted data,this data wasnot there until SM6 was running. Windows repaired the corrupted portions on my harddrive. My computer has
been running smooth ever since.I have since purchased Disk Keeper 9 Pro,PCDoc Pro3.5, Spy Sweeper and WindowWasher to maintain my computer.

Disk Keeper Professional 9: now defrags my drives
PC Doc Pro3.5:corrects errors in Windows xp and lets u backup your registry
Spy Sweeper:elimantes spyware,malware,keyloggers and rootkits
WindowWasher:completely deletes unneccesary files

I now use 4 seperate dedicated programs instead of a all-in-one like SM6 Professional

non of these programs creates corruption on my system.


Be careful of any program that fiddles with 1)Registry settings(namely compacting the registry or defragging the registry),(2) System Ram defragging.

I repeatedly sent emails to iolo about this,and they have not replied todate.

I would highly recommend not purchasing this program.