Customer Reviews

System Mechanic 5 Professional [Old Version]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This software is only good if you are paying $5 or less. It has the worst defrag out there. As many reviews have mentioned, it takes endless hours to optomize defrag a disc. It runs and runs and runs. The nice components are the start-up manager, the memory defrag, and some of the other utilities. Out of the box , my software would not update. Re-installed twice to get the update to work. Many system reboots needed for basic changes. Serious geeks in need of a challenge may love this program, though I doubt it. I emailed tech support, and they have to get back to me. They get back(supposedly) within 48 hours. It has only been 24, so I will update you later. I switched from Norton due to its system hogging, but at least it worked. Avoid this unless you are endlessy amused paying lots and constantly repairing the program that is supposed to repair your computer. Get your act together iolo.
Update 12/18/05...
Still use only one feature regularly. That is the start-up manager. The rest is of little use or needed very rarely. Went to Disckeeper for my defragmenting. It works very well. I also went to Pcillin for internet security and anti-virus. Great program, not heavy on resources. The Sys mech has started to flash an update to version 6 window when I start the program. I have not spent time to disable the pop-up, but another negative. I have emailed about the disc defrag problem, and they send the same link to the knowledge base ( very ironic ), and claim it is an isolated problem with my computer, despite the endless list of complaints on forums , reviews, tech journals, ect... Do not expect any help should things go wrong.

I downloaded an evaluation version of System Mechanic after seeing the product at Fry's. It looked very promising since I was encountering longer boot times than usual. After seeing a "Your system needs optimization" (or similar message) I ran their Optimize Wizard. After seeing that it would take some time, I let the utility run. Hours later, I returned to my system to see it running CHKDSK prior to booting. I was a little concerned that it was still optimizing over 3 hours after I started the Optimize Wizard. I watched it run for another 20 minutes or so until it finally finished and rebooted. I thought this would end the optimization, but I was surprised to see it run CHKDSK again! At this point I became concerned. I rebooted the system, only to see it continue to run CHKDSK every time (a 40 min process given that I have two 250G hard drives). I called Dell Customer Support to learn that I first had to pay $250 to talk to a Software Support Rep. After spending an hour on the phone with the rep, the conclusion was that SYSTEM MECHANIC HAD CORRUPTED MY REGISTRY AND I HAD TO REINSTALL WINDOWS XP AND LOSE EVERYTHING ON MY HARD DRIVE!!!!!. DO NOT BUY THIS SOFTWARE IF YOU VALUE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR SYSTEM. I had nothing but good expectations for this product, and it wasted my time and money. And this was supposed to be a FREE TRIAL. I have never written this negative a review in my life, but what else can I say? I'm sure if you had this experience, you would do the same. Too bad Amazon doesn't let you choose negative stars. If they did, this product would be rated 5 NEGATIVE STARS!!

Having used SM Pro 4 virtually since its inception, I was looking forward to the "new, improved" version. Gawd, what a mistake! Wish I'd done what I usually do: namely, come to these pages and read the reviews BEFORE I upgraded! Save yourselves the frustration -- and EXPENSE! -- of having to completely reformat your computer: that's what I'm going through after attempting to install this nightmare! Don't bother trying to get anything positive from SM's data base, much less any live help. Total and complete waste of time. One reviewer suggested that this should sell in the five-buck range; I say Iolo should PAY US!

ADDENDUM As you can see from my review below, I do not like this product as it stands, however I must point out that the review by Juan "Implacable" Rulfo is completely incorrect. When you first install SM5 Pro, you do indeed only get a 30 day trial of the antivirus and firewall software. If you follow the instructions, however, and register on line with Kapersky you get a key that is good for a full year. In fact the antivirus and firewall are probably the best part of this product, and if you can get it cheap enough, make it worth the purchase price. If this did not happen for Mr. Rulfo, he should contact Iolo directly to resolve the matter.

I only wish the description of the functions described by Hiro Protagonist were accurate. I very much want to like System Mechanic, unfortunately my experience has been very different. In a simple test I tried to defrag a disk with the following specs 40 Gigs, 25% full, 10% fragmentation to start) but had to stop it after 24 hours. The amount of fragmentation was not different at the finish than at the start. I think things like pagefiles cause serious problems with the System Mechanic defragger. I downloaded a trial version of Perfect Disk for comparison and in two hours it was done. Yes, it does what System Mechanic is trying to do: Move all the files to one side of the platter, leaving as much contigous free space as possible. Furthermore it puts the least used files down first, maximizing the likelihood that your disk will stay defragmented. As a further test, I purposely caused further fragmentation on my disk and reversed the order of the tests (Perfect Disk first, SM second). The results were similar. Something is seriously wrong with the defrag utility in system mechanic if in 24 hours time it can't do what Perfect Disk did in less than 2.

Yes System Mechanic has a spyware/malware tool, but the few hundred entries it checks against are nothing compared to the 20,000 that the free Spybot has in its data base. Somebody did not take the time to build up the spyware database before release Perhaps they should have given Kapersky this job, as they did they antivirus and firewall.

I do agree that the registry tools are good, and the Kapersky antivirus and firewall do a good job also. I will even say that the file recovery tools, although slightly buggy are strong. All in all, I think this suite has the potential to be great, but somebody was in too much of a hurry and they are doing themselves and their customers a diservice by releasing the product in its current state.

Totally agree with other reviewers regarding the endless process of deframentation...a fully optimized defrag literally takes hours even on my home computer with a 2.8 Ghz processor and 1.0 Gb RAM. The 2005 model's "Maintenance Wizard" is buggy in that the routine that searches for and removes invalid registry entries identifies the entries but, at when the wizard is finished, reports that none were found and provides no opportunity to remove them. However, if you run the "Fix Registry Problems" as a stand-alone routine, it finds and reports invalid entries and lets you delete them. I've tested this by running the Maintenance Wizard and then immediately running the Fix Registry Problems; Wizard finds nothing but the other finds numerous. Iolo's solution to this problem is to uninstall and reinstall. I did that twice but the problem remains.

This is a collection of useful utilities-Antispam and anti-hack(read firewall) from Kaspersky. Registry cleaner, and other assorted tools all seem to work well except for the defragmenter. I have an 80 GB hardrive partioned into two 40 GB drives. I tried to defrag the system (C:) that was only about 30% full and 7% fragmented according to the windows defrag ultility. 15 hours later the system mechanic optimal defragger was still grinding away- obviously they have something to fix here.

In response to Hiro's comments, I understand that an optimal defrag takes longer, but 15 hours is rediculous. I used a competitors product and it did the equivalent of an optimal defrag in 1 1/2 hours.

This product is good, not great. It has some features that are just so/so and others that are good. The junk files finder is a nice feature, but VERY slow! The registry fixer is below par. I find regseeker to be much better, and free! The defrag tool is basic, and once again, very slow.The incinerator feature is great. Don't even attempt to relocate software, it hasn't worked once for me, and created problems which took even more time to fix. I could go on and on, but you get the point.

All in all, it's an OK product, but it definitely does not do it all!

I have been using this for a while now, I did not install the antivirus as I like trend micro's antivirus.
How ever I have used the other features and must of them can done by other programs for free.
You can get ad-aware and spybot for the adware and spyware scaning.
You can also get the registry and optimizer from other free programs. One I used and compaired it to this is a free program called easy cleaner.
Now the feature I do like that this program has is the ram opimizer, that does help a lot in speeding up my system. It also has a neat tool bar that shows you how much ram and cpu cycles you are using which I also like. That tool bar also shows network usage which is nice.
Now the defrag is the worst for this program. I like it run for a week and it never actually got done, guess that is what I get for a 280 gb hard drive.

I bought system mechanics 5 pro. After a week I just started my computer today and a window pop out to let me know that the antivirus was disabled, if I wanted to keep it running I would have to pay a "small fee", I click the button and it took me to the Kapersky website where the "small fee" was to pay for the whole program again. Nowhere in the website mentions how to "upgrade" the software. The window also asks you for the User ID and the Serial Number which I entered becuase I thought I bought the full product, I enter it and it didn't work. This software might be good to clean errors, but don't buy it for the antivirus because this software is misleading, and don't buy for the defrag
which I haven't tried but reading previous reviews kind of gives me an idea.

I purchased this software and enetered the requested registration information and serial number. Every time I boot up I again get asked for the information. When I enter it, it (again) thanks me. It's a neverending cycle. There is no phone support from Iolo of any kind. Their help database is of little value. This software is utter garbage and you should not waste your time or money with it. In fact, I will not consider any other products from Iolo because of their complete lack of supprt.