Iolo System Mechanic 9.5 Review Discussion

By Jay Garmon

Iolo System Mechanic 9.5 bills itself as the ultimate all-in-one tune-up utility for your PC. Can it really squeeze more performance out of your system, or is it just another glorified defrag app? We check it out in this review.

Read the full content of this Article: Iolo System Mechanic 9.5 Review

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Yeah, so good review of SM. I have been using it for some years now and have been generally satisfied. BUT -- and that is a big but, there are several problems.

First, Iolo just put out an update, which I can only believe was aimed at addressing the kind of problem I experienced a few days ago.

Suddenly I started getting warnings about dlls that were failing to load -- they became more numerous, until I couldn't operate my PC (a Tosh U205). I tried uninstalling and reinstalling a clean copy of SM Pro to no avail.

Finally, had to completely reinstall Windows 7 HP, then installed the updated version of SM Pro 9.5.

Who knows what this was all about.

Also, one thing I have found with SM Pro is the incredibly SLOW scan times for anti-virus. It literally takes all day to complete, much slower than almost any other program I can think of.

Iolo needs to do some work on that.....

I turn off Active System Care because it seems to make my Toshiba run loud and long while it is active. I choose to run the program manually.

 

We need more reviews like this.. Great review.. Jay

AWC from iobit
Tune-up
PC Doc pro

Stuff like that, always interesting to see if it really works..

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into those.

 

There is no competition for the family techie. Even when System Mechanic doesn't cause cause problems and runs as smoothly as possible, it obviously doesn't deliver on its promises.

 

From what the review says, this is a product without an audience. After all, someone with the tech experience to use it (and clean up after it) is savvy enough to use free tools and not need it at all.

Seems like pointless software

 

I used Sys Mechanic many years back ... I think v. 6 was my last one I was using here in the office. But I had it accidentally eat files like the reviewer was referring to after an update ... never again. Pity it still seems to be behaving like that.

And I totally agree on the anti-virus scan comments made above. It took FOREVER!

 

DO NOT BUY THIS PROGRAM

I purchased this earlier today because my laptop was getting slow. After I ran the program (which took about 2 hours to check all my files) it finally finished and I thought WOO HOO, I'm going to have a fast computer again.

NOPE!

My computer was actually slower. On the box it says your computer will be up to 300% faster, but mine was about 300% slower. I didnt know why it was like this so I did a system restore to early this morning and THEN my laptop couldnt get an internet connection. I did everything to fix it, but I could not connect. So I reversed the system restore and that got my internet working again, but of course the computer is slow as hell again. I am currently uninstalling the program and I hope that will return everything to normal. This program has caused me 6 hours of grief. Do not buy this thing. You have been warned.