I apologize if this sounds like a commercial, but I would like to share some info about a fantastic program that I've been using on my laptop for the last five years or so. I've never had one that lasted this long, they usually would go in the garbage after 2 or 3 years. From just normal usage, PC's get fragmented registries, misaligned files, all sorts of errors, accompanied by ever increasing blue screens of death. I would have to do a factory restore just about every few months, and this is something that can take up to 2 days of hard work! And the older the system gets, the more it has to catch up with all the updates when you do this. Just try having to install 3 years worth of windows updates and pray there are no errors. The laptop would eventually just go into total meltdown one day, and that was that. Back to Best Buy/Circuit City, whatever.
What's the difference now? The program is called Iolo System Mechanic. It's always been very good, but in the last year or so it's been upgraded to version 10. It basically takes the place of at least half a dozen spyware programs that i was using, along with a litany of disc and registry cleaners... I was also spending a good chunk of money every year on Antivirus and Firewall software. Well get this: System Mechanic has an excellent antivirus and firewall built into it, and it updates itself at least 3 times a day. There are all sorts of tools, like Internet Connection optimizers, Program and file defragmenters, Registry and start-up optimizers, and security vulnerability detection systems.
But the best thing is, with this latest revision, comes a program that repairs misaligned files. I never even knew about this. Lately, I decided to put my entire CD collection on Itunes. This is over 1500 albums.... 137 Gigabytes of music. Because the System Mechanic defrag tool shows me a diagram of my hard drive and I can read on the bottom which files it is aligning as it works, I was shocked to find out that whenever I loaded new albums, they were being fragmented all over the drive as I was loading them, when there was ample free continuous space on the drive. This is why PC's get so messed up over time. After I defrag the programs and the files, I notice that my computer starts up and loads everything in under 30 seconds, where I used to have to sit around for 3 minutes or more. The bottom line: This computer is OLD, and it works better than it did right out of the factory... lightning fast....and no more blue screens of death.
My hard drive capacity is 225 gigs. It had gotten down to 11 gigs of free space and I started having issues. So I ran the Windows Vista defrag tool and that got me another 12 gigs of free space. Another thing I just did was delete all but the most recent system restore points and that got me another 25 gigs.
I believe I paid about $75 for System Mechanic about 5 or 6 years ago and its only $19.95 per year to renew. It is truly the everything-in-one tool that I don't know how anyone with a PC can live without. I have been reluctant to go to a Mac because I just can't seem to get used to them, but right now I have no reason to.
Here's the link to Iolo....