Customer Reviews

iolo System Mechanic 7 - 3 PCs

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I bought it. because I had version 6.0 before, liked it.

But this version is not worth buying. Read: this is the only time I have ever writen a bad review about a piece of software ever!

1. It doesn't recognize my MS firewall or antivirus.

2. Tech support is non-existant. I tried literally for a month, today I got them on the phone after a 1.5 hour wait, and he tech support guy said to me about some of the problems "I don't write the program." -- Pathetic.

3. Many of the features are not tuned to Vista, although they say it is comaptible it is really for XP or previous Windows versions.

4. At every system startup the program tries to load a piece of itself and stops the rest of bootup process.

There are many other problems as well, but I don't have more time to waste with this company. I have uninstalled it but unfortunately they have my money already.

I will never buy another product from Iolo.

The good: Doesn't seem to hog resources on MY PC, but I can't really tell. Has a lot of useful functions that process at reasonable speeds. Cheap (after rebates, mine was free).

The bad: doesn't have any kind of reporting to the user; won't list or detail specific problems it finds, just general categories, can't pick and choose offending problems to solve, doesn't tell you what processing results are.

Stopped working within 15 minutes of first launch (double-clicking the icon, nothing happened); I expect this had something to do with downloading a Vista update shortly after installing SM7, and I uninstalled and reinstalled it again, which got SM working. So...not 100% compatible with Vista, despite downloading updates to SM7 and being almost 9 months after Vista's official release.

Won't acknowledge hardware firewalls and can't be told to ignore the issue. My router is my firewall and, I dare say, a lot stronger then their software solution, but I can't tell SM I have a firewall in place and it doesn't detect it. Of course other people have complained here that SM doesn't respect Windows' built-in firewall because it doesn't control outbound traffic, but why not allow for the issue as a user choice?

You must approve launch on every restart before doing anything else with your PC. Maybe this is a Vista User Authorization Control issue, but I doubt it because I already turned off that stupid bot process. Hey SM, stop bugging me and run already!

Reports registry problems, wasted space, and a host of other problems on a virtually virgin drive. I really can't explain this one...I installed Vista Ultimate and a few other applications and utilities like Avast! AV, Shadowrun and iTunes on a brand-new drive, the machine ran under this build for maybe two hours, and already my drive is 20% fragged? Yeah, right.

Tech support? What tech support? I emailed a question about whether I should reinstall the app after discovering it wouldn't launch (see above); never heard from them. Many of Iolo's competitors reply to service questions with an autoresponder at the very least; several have round-the-clock staff who answer your questions within hours. These guys don't.

Bottom line, I'm major skeptical about this product because 1) it won't tell you specifically what's wrong with your system, 2) it doesn't tell you what it fixed, and 3) who knows whether it's finding real or phantom issues to "repair." Doing over again, I'd probably skip it and buy something else.

Software has some good features (Registry Repair) but it has many problems. For example, it continues to try to log-on to their webpage despite the fact that I have set it not to check for updates. After waiting for 10 hours for it to do a major defrag, when I rechecked it told me the hard drive was still 18% fragmented. Perhaps most frustrating is the fact they the never reply to your techsupport emails ... I can't recommend anyone purchasing this product.

This is the first ever review I've written so I hope that tells you how much I hated this product. Half the time it wouldn't open up and then when it did, you would end up wishing it hadn't. Here are the reasons not to buy:
1. It comes with an anti-spyware program. So what, you can download better ones for free (SM7 consistently missed ones the other program picked up).
2. It comes with a defrag program. Again, so what. You already have that on your computer and I noticed no appreciable difference in defrag speeds.
3. If you do end up buying this against almost everybody's advice, DO NOT USE THE CLEAN THE REGISTRY FUNCTION. It took me almost three days to get my computer back to the point that it wouldn't randomly give me the blue screen of death. I tried the undo changes function in SM7, I emailed/called iolo (waste of time), and searched the internet for a solution. Finally, another program generated a critical error to windows (where you send an error report), on a whim I sent an error report, and wonder of wonders, the windows webstie actually told me the solution. I guess clicking send an error report actually does help in the long run.
4. Finally, it acts a lot like adware itself. Almost everytime you click on something (check for updates, open it up, etc) an ad for one of their other products pops up. Annoying.
Take it or leave it, but that's why this product is now in my trash can, along with the money I spent on it. Don't even get me started on uninstalling this piece of ...

Bought 3 licenses to this worthless software and their customer service must still be trying to figure out how to make it work before they respond to my emails. Its been three weeks since my first complaint to customer service and apparently their 24 hour response time is as reliable as their software.

My old hard drive was 18% defragged as was my new one I installed with only the OS and System Mechanic 7. Obviously the software is causing the problem. It also says my registry has never been backed up which I can not explain since I used their utility on System Mechanic 4 or 5 times. I am reluctant at this point to believe that this software does anything it says it does as it provides no information about what it has done just tells you it performed the function. If it removes spyware it does not tell you what it removed, does not allow you to quarantine, just claims it removed it.

This software is a system hog and will load on startup no matter what so expect a delay of 5-10 minutes before using your computer.

I would not buy software from this company in the future since they apparently ignore customer complaints.

I Installed SM 7 on 2 of my 3 computers...It appeared to be nice the first day that I installed it on my computers, it found alot of issues and repaired them.

The next day when I found some time , I went to play some of my online games like Battlefield 2 and 2142. As I went to open the games , the splash screen would appear then disappear to my desktop not loading the game. I tried to reinstall my games but no luck. After I realised that it may be something with the SM 7, I uninstalled the software...once I did that my games worked again.

In the next day or so, my son said to me that some of his programs were not opening like mine...Halo on PC and some others...I removed SM 7 from his computer as well...but this time didnt work. I then went to the registry and removed IOLO there..That still didnt work...I then found an IOLO folder in my program files that still contained about 8 files...all but 2 I could delete. I then had to go into safe mode to kill the remaining 2...Now Halo works!

Ive tried several emails to IOLO and get no support...I hope WalMart will give me my money back. Waste of money in my opinion.

After reading reviews in several computer magazines, I thought that I would give the program a try. I installed it on two PC's that have Norton Internet Security 2007 installed on them (this contains a firewall).

System Mechanic 7 does not recognize the firewall and reports that no firewall is installed.

I tried to contact Tech Support only to find out that there is NO toll free number then a 20 minute wait on hold. The tech was most unhelpful sending me an email then terminating the call. The email was worthless in fixing the issue. I have written 2 more messages and now wait.

For a program that seems to be well made, the tech support would lend me to advise others to steer away from this product.

First, do not expect any help from iolo tech support or customer support as they refuse to acknowledge a major issue. Maybe if you're lucky, you will get an auto generated knowledge base article pertaining to something other than your question.

So, this information has been gleaned from those of us unfortunate enough to suffer the BSODs and program hangs the hard way by attempting to run System Mechanic 7.

At boot this software runs a service called ioloDMVsvc.exe which dynamically drops mchlnjDrv.sys as a file and then starts it as a kernel mode device driver.

Once the device driver is in place it hooks all applications upon startup and does a code insertion of the ioloHL.dll into their process space.

Then ioloHL.dll stuffs up big time and gets itself into an endless loop. Using up all your CPU time.

MchInjDrv.sys is part of 3rd party API hooking software development kit call madCodeHook from a guy called Mathias Rauen. It is used by rootkits and security software from companies that don't know how to write their own device drivers or don't have time to. It can be used for good or evil depending on the DLL being injected into other software.

Want to put it on your system?

I downloaded the trail version of this software and here is my assessment: Buyer Beware! I believe the people who have written reviews stating they lost system functionality, however, my experience was fortunately somewhat positive. After installing this program, I allowed it to do everything that it was capable of. My system was cleaned up rather well and I did experience an increase in speed (add five stars). I also selected all of the available options to run.

Second: I looked at the price. Too expensive for what is delivered. My perceived value of this program is $14.99 (minus one star). If you decide to buy this program, get two other people to go in on it with you and install it on all three computers - effectively bringing the cost down to $15.00.

Third: The next day from a different computer, I came to this website, read the reviews and was totally freaked out. I went home and turned on my computer. Everything seemed fine. I then opened the System Mechanic program. It reported low memory. I reflected on the reviews provided here and immediately uninstalled the program. My computer now runs beautifully. In hindsight, if you choose to add this program make sure you turn OFF all of the automatic options (minus another star). Make the use of this program intentionally manual and use it sparingly.

Iolo might want to consider making this program web-based and pay-per-visit like an auto mechanic. I would pay $4.99 to run this program from the web to improve the health of an unhealthy computer. Partnering/advertising with companies like yahoo/google would most likely provide the traffic needed to make a descent profit.

Disaster
I installed this program on my Vista laptop mainly to clean the HD and probably gain extra space, after the installation was completed and updated for the latest version, the system scaned the HD and declared fixing broken registries and dead links, then the SM reboot the computer.
Guess what! The reboot failed and gave an error message that the windows is corrupted. All my attempts for the last two days to reboot failed, as it seems SM destroyed the Window boot.exe or change its address so it cannot be found. The last resort, according the Laptop Mnfc is to use the rescue disk, hence reformat the HD to its original factory state, and, of course, all the information, programs, pics, docs..etc, will be lost.
Consider yourself WARNED..