Originally written by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell the SysInternal suuite of tools quickly became the favorite of Windows geeks around the world. Then came word that Microsoft had bought Mark’s company and all the software which immediately raised concern that either the tools would disappear or that Microsoft would bastardize them.

Well it turned out that Microsoft did neither but instead gave them their own spot on the TechNet site at Microsoft where they continue to be updated and made available for free.

The one problem though is that there are so many programs that make up the complete suite of tools that it can make it difficult to keep them updated – until now that is.

Thankfully Emiel Wieldraaijer has come to the rescue with a simple program called: SysInternalsUpdater. You can use this little app to automatically check and update the utilities that make up the SysInternals suite.

You can grab it right from his site or :

via 4Sysops

SysInternalsUpdater: Automatically update that goldmine of Windows utilities is a post from: winextra
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Welcome to the last part of our review of System Mechanic by iolo technologies. Now before I wrap this review up with my final thoughts about system Mechanics there are a couple of other parts of this package of tools that I want to take a look at first.

As I have pointed out several times in this review some of the tools found in System Mechanic allow you to mess around in some really sensitive areas of Windows and because of this you should make sure to create a System Restore point or at least have a current back-up image of your system.

That isn’t to say that the System Mechanic team hasn’t done their best to make this collection of tools as safe as they possibly can. Far from it but t hat doesn’t change the fact you should also make sure you have all your bases covered just in case something does go wrong.

I am sure that the team behind System Mechanic realize things can go wrong and this is one of the reasons that they have included their own form of rollback called SafetyNet.

SafetyNet – Catching you just in case something goes wrong

Given my concerns about some of the automatic features of the tools in System Mechanic I was pleased to see that they have included their own implementation of a System Restore within System Mechanic. Called SafetyNet the idea is that any changes you make from within System Mechanic is kept track of and will let you rollback those changes.

As you can see the option to undo the changes I made to the registry with one of System Mechanics tools is available. all you have to do is enable the the item in the list and then click on the Undo this action link in the side bar area.

Wrapping it all up

If there is one thing that can be said about System Mechanic it is that it has just about everything except the proverbial kitchen sink when it comes to tools for optimizing and fixing your system. In some ways it can appear quite daunting to the first time user (and this is one of the reasons I went into the detail that I have).

Now personally I am not a big fan of these all-in-one do-everything types of packages but that is only because I have been using Windows powered computers for a very long time and have gotten use to doing things that many would find too technical to feel comfortable doing. In this case tools like System Mechanic – when used properly and with caution – are a good solution.

When it comes to price you can find a lot of tools that are free but in many cases you get exactly what you deserve. Sometime is pays to fork over the money for a good reputable program like System Mechanic. Now at a price of $49.95 this might seem to be a little on the expensive side but when you buy System Mechanic you can install it on 3 of your computers which makes it great for family situations and really brings the price down to $16.65 per install.

All-in-all I would have no problem recommending System Mechanic to the average Windows user with the only caveat being the same one I have stressed throughout the review – make sure you have a current System Restore point and/or a backup image before making any serious changes with System Mechanic.

Software information

Product Name: System Mechanic 9.5
Company: iolo technologies
Price: $49.95 (installable on 3 computers)
Product Page: System Mechanic Standard

Complete Review List:

Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 1
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 2
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 3
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 4

Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 4 is a post from: winextra
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1. Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 1
2. Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 3
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System Mechanic has been around for quite a long time and is probably one of the most feature complete packages of tools to enable you to optimize your computer with the minimum of fuss and maximum ease of use.

Normally it is pretty easy, if time consuming, to do software reviews since there are a limited number of things you can write about. Then along comes a program like System Mechanic that is basically an interface for a vast number of individual tools or wizards that help you work with your computer.

I could treat System Mechanic as any other program up for being reviewing and write a 600 to 1,000 word post with some screen captures but with the complexity of what is offered in the program I didn’t feel right do that. Instead this review will be separated into four parts over this week so that I can provide you with the right amount of information so that you can make an informed decision about the program.

The review will be broken down into the following sections:

• Part 1 – Initial look and the Overview Section of System Mechanic
• Part 2 – The Individual Tools Section
• Part 3 – The All-in-One section
• Part 4 – Miscellaneous & The Wrap-up and Thoughts

At the end of the review I will pull it together with my overall opinion of System Mechanic but any decisions about buying the package will be up to you. Now on to the review.

System Mechanic 9.5 by iolo technologies

After the install the first thing you will see is the welcome screen that let’s you access some tutorial videos, customer information and a What’s New. You can select to not have this screen show whenever you start up System Mechanic – which really is probably a pretty safe setting to enable.

After your first start-up, and if you have checked the Don’t show this again option, you will typically find yourself in the Overview section of System Mechanic.

System Mechanic – The Sections

There is no getting around it – System Mechanic is a robust program full of all kinds of tool to enable you to do all kinds of things with; and to, your computer. From cleaning up dead files to trying to performing all kinds of diagnostic System Mechanic has something under the hood for your needs.

In fact there is so much there that when you first start using System Mechanic it is easy to find oneself feeling overwhelmed. While this post, and the rest to come this week, is primarily a review it is also written to try and help you through the maze of options and tools you will find waiting for you.

To try an alleviate some of your potential confusion System Mechanic is divided into separate areas, with each area containing one or more wizards or tools to accomplish certain tasks. As you can see from the image on the right the main areas are:

• Dashboard
  • Overview
  • Problems
• ActiveCare
  • Automated Tasks
• Internet Security
  • Anti-malware
  • Firewall
• Toolbox
  • All-in-one Tools
  • Individual Tools
• Reports
  • IntelliStatus
  • History

This review will primarily center around the main areas of: Overview, All-in-one Tools, and Individual Tools.

Overview section – and Analyze Now.

It is from here that you can run the initial Analyze Now, which will give you two options for analyzing your system, or you can drill down to the other options and tools available.

Seeing as how this was my first run I selected the Deep Scan (2nd options) from the drop down menu on Analyze Now. This is the progress dialog you will see as the scan progresses.

When the scan is done you will end up with your results being displayed using the meter image and to options: Repair All (automatically) or View Problems found in the scan.

Hmm .. not bad but not good either. So what kind of errors or problems did System Mechanic find? Well clicking on the View Problems button switches to a list of what was found.

Okay looking at the list my first reaction is that some of the items deserve the “red” important treatment but things like the hard drives having 9% fragmentation isn’t really that bad, and yes 6 Gig of clutter might seem like a lot but on a multi-terrabyte drive .. well not so much.

Now you do have the option here for System Mechanic to handle fixing the errors, or problems, that it has found automatically but I personally have a hard time letting programs like System Mechanic do things on their own. I realize that the people behind System Mechanic, and other programs like it, do everything they to make the procedure as safe as possible but I prefer a little more hands-on when it comes to this stuff.

All of the repair options in the list also point towards the Individual Tools within System Mechanic and will be covered in our continuing review tomorrow.

Next: Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 2

Complete Review List:

Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 1
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 2
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 3
Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 4

Software Review: System Mechanic 9.5 Part 1 is a post from: winextra
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4. Software Review: Ashampoo Burning Studio 7 – Part One

Duriosoft Indocor, based in Indonesia, offers Start-Q, Version 1.0 released on September 20, just about a week ago. Start-Q is designed to give you some control over this process via an attractive, easy to use interface.

The program can be downloaded for free (donations accepted) from the Start-Q website. It’s pretty small, and installs quickly and smoothly. A very obvious omission from the website is the lack of compatibility info, but we tested Start-Q on both Win XP and Vista and it worked well. Also omitted from the “online user manual” was the need for a reboot after installation. If you don’t, the program won’t function properly.

Once the program is open, all the startup items are visible in the top pane. You can drag/drop or double-click to move them to the startup queue at the bottom.

You can edit each item to wait a specified amount of time, fully load before moving on, or (careful with this one) set it to not move to the next item in the queue until the item has opened, run, and closed. Obviously, if you select this option on a program that stays open, the Start-Q queue will sit and wait forever.

You can also disable startup items from the Start-Q interface, but beware of programs that put themselves back in! These items should be left totally out of the queue to start on their own, with Start-Q instructed to delay the first queued item to accommodate them.

Be sure you read through the Online User Manual the first time you use Start-Q. It’s not completely intuitive, but one run through the short manual, and you’re be up to speed.

After saving and activating your queue, Start-Q will give you the option of having it run transparently, or with a small GUI. The GUI permits you to see, with a small status bar, what’s loading, and provides you with a “skip” button to discard the currently loading item, and move to the next. Once you have your queue set up the way you want it, transparent is probably the way to go. While getting things tweaked, however, the status bar is very handy.

On the XP and Vista machines, Start-Q worked a treat. I chose the “wait until..before loading next” option, and with only one exception, it flowed nice and smooth, the computer available to me during the loads. The exception on the XP box was a gaming keyboard driver that wants to connect to the ‘net and waits for the connection, but I have it blocked. I moved that one to the end of the list so it can sit and wait for the timeout all on it’s own. You’ll find tweaks that work best for your setup as well.

Overall, I feel Start-Q could be quite useful. Being a very new release, it’s not surprising, but slightly disappointing that I encountered a couple bugs, such as the program insisting on opening off the side of the screen, necessitating a drag back to the middle where I could see it.

Their website needs some work, too. The online manual references images that aren’t there, and in some places the “English as second language” is painfully confusing, in addition to being a bit short on information, such as the OS compatibility I mentioned earlier.

Start-Q may not be quite ready for mainstream yet, but it’s VERY close. It’s staying on the XP machine for a while, so I’m hoping for updates from Duriosoft!

-Bill Vincent

Software: Start-Q Startup Manager is a post from: winextra
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With a big thanks to VG over at the Tweaking with Vishal, who along with one of his readers has come up with a handy utility to create a bootable USB and have made it freely available. With the utility it takes four steps to start creating your bootable USB stick so it really doesn’t get any easier than that.

So head over to Tweaking with Vishal and have a quick read through of how it works as you are downloading the free utility.

A big hat tip to Steve Clayton for the pointer to this.

Create a bootable USB for installing Windows 7 is a post from: winextra
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While the more technical of us know how to change the bootscreen image manually, BootSkin does it easily and quickly. Available from Download.com, It comes with a small handful of images in the slick little interface, such as BeOS and OS/2 screens, but hundreds more can be easily grabbed by clicking ‘browse boot screen library’. Choose from 800 pages of images and they seamlessly integrate into Bootskin, provided you select the ‘open with BootSkin’ option. You can import the image into BootSkin manually if you elect to save it to disk.

Preview the image you will be presented with on reboot, then one click, a quick registry change by BootScreen and it’s done.

In addition, you can import your own images from disk, there is a tutorial in an older post here on creating bootskins on your own, leading to the “random bootscreen’ feature”, which, as suggested, randomly displays an image on every reboot, ala wallpaper changers.

My favorite bootskin:

While you’re at it, stop by TheTechTurf home, there are several freeware programs that look quite handy.

Boot Screen Changer is a post from: winextra
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