Best WinPC Utility Suite

[Mike Feury]

I'm looking to replace Norton SystemWorks as my main PC utility package, as it seems to have gone steadily downhill in the last few years.

The best two atlernatives I've been able to identify are System Mechanic Pro and SystemSuite.

I'm leaning towards Sys Mechanic because of their recent deal with Kaspersky anti-virus. This would enable me to ditch Norton A-V also. I'm satisfied with NAV's performance, but it does have a high running overhead.

I run two Win2000 Pro PCs and an XP Home laptop, and may move the PCs to XP.

Anyone got another utility package to recommend, or any preference between the two I mentioned. Any gotchas? :)

Thanks,

[Catweazle]

The only tools I believe you need are these:

A decent antivirus program
At least two spyware detection and removal programs
A decent 'Uninstaller' which will monitor your installations and ensure that all traces of a program are removed when you uninstall.

Beyond that, regular use of the 'Defragmenter' and 'Disk Cleanup' system accessories will keep your system in good order.

I don't believe that any one 'Utility Suite' provides all of that. You are best to use stand-alone programs, in my view.

[dlh6213]

The only tools I believe you need are these:

A decent antivirus program
At least two spyware detection and removal programs
A decent 'Uninstaller' which will monitor your installations and ensure that all traces of a program are removed when you uninstall.

Beyond that, regular use of the 'Defragmenter' and 'Disk Cleanup' system accessories will keep your system in good order.

I don't believe that any one 'Utility Suite' provides all of that. You are best to use stand-alone programs, in my view.

Can you recommend a decent 'Uninstaller'? Any good ones that are free?

[Catweazle]

See this topic:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread10488

[dlh6213]

See this topic:

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread10488

I tried that link and got ERROR 404. But I did a search and found this thread:
http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread10488-Uninstaller.html which looks like the one you tried to link to. Thanks!

[Catweazle]

Sorry. Yes, that's the topic I meant.

[Mike Feury]

I don't believe that any one 'Utility Suite' provides all of that. You are best to use stand-alone programs, in my view.

Thanks for the advice Catweazle :) I agree with you, and I have separate tools for the purposes you mention except an Uninstaller, an area I've ignored up to now. I'm checking out your two recommendations in the other thread.

I want a suite as a first line of defense for day-to-day use and to cover the times when I forget or don't get to the separate apps. Plus something to install for colleagues and friends, which I can schedule to run regularly.

[Catweazle]

Of the two products you've mentioned I'd choose System Mechanic. I'd endorse dumping Norton, and I can't for the life of me understand why people choose to continue using Norton products!

Using a Utility Suite will incur quite a bit of system overhead, and should be avoided where high demands are made on system performance.

[dlh6213]

...I can't for the life of me understand why people choose to continue using Norton products!...

Catweazle, this is not intended to be rude or offensive; I'd just like to explain why some people still use Norton products.

First of all, I believe it is name recogintion -- Norton is better advertised and many new systems come with a free trial preinstalled. If people new of alternatives, I'm sure they would try them.

Next, is what Norton SystemWorks can do. I've been using it since '96 (upgrading every other year) and have had little trouble with it. I just finished scanning with One Button Checkup and it found 7 registry errors and 15 shortcut errors. When I ran it the other day on another users profile, it found over 100 shortcut errors. Now, I suppose if I spent enough time, I'd be able to find many of these errors, but probably not all of them. And the time spent doing that could be better spent doing other things. Norton fixes them all in less than a minute.

Almost daily, I run Disk Cleanup (in Windows), clean all temporary folders for all users, search for *.tmp and delete whatever is found. Yet when I use Norton's CleanSweep, it still finds MB's of data that can be cleaned. I don't know where it's finding it, so without Norton it would continue to build up.

Using Norton's Internet Cleanup usually turns up a couple of plug-ins and ActiveX controls that can be cleaned. Again, I don't know where I would go to remove these manually.

So, until I find a good alternative, I will continue to use Norton products. Now that I am aware of System Mechanic, I'm going to give it a try. For anyone that is interested, it can be obtained free (for a limited time) by purchasing PNY RAM, then clicking on this link:
http://www.iolo.com/pny/landing.cfm?pid=9687C57E-2913-43D9-8ED6-8C2C05E597B5&adid=FA32CDE2-E6A5-4258-BB69-2AB87FF28BF6

Well, that's my two-cents, for what it's worth. Any feedback or recommendations welcome!

[Catweazle]

Oh don't mind me. I have a particular 'bee in the bonnet' in relation to Norton products ;)

If you use them and have success with them, then fine.

It's the extraordinarily large number of people who have problems with their products that gets me riled, and when I track down solutions to the problems that cross my desk I find that the same issues get replicated year after year, version after version! Conflicts with other software, installation and uninstall issues, system slowdowns, the list goes on....

I'm sure they're working to resolve the problems which exist. Late last year (or perhaps earlier this year, I can't quite recall) they purchased the rights to PowerQuest Drive Image. The purchase wasn't to buy out a competitor to 'Ghost'. It was to obtain the rights to a better code base.

Norton Internet Security, in tandem with Norton AntiVirus, is the slowest operating software firewall and antivirus combination in existence, and I'm sure they'll address THAT issue some day. Perhaps they'll make changes to LiveUpdate, to resolve the problems people have been experiencing since NAV2002 or perhaps even earlier!

Like I said, don't mind me. I'm just a cynical and embittered old Techie!

[nanosani]

I've used system mechanic mechanic pro ... and it has been quite helpful to me.

[Montrell274]

I use standalone anti-virus (AVG Antivirus Guard) and standalone firewall (ZoneAlarm Pro) and neither fails. As for utility suite, I use System Mechanic Pro for the fun of it.l

[thepom11]

I also find stand alone to be the answer, av-pc-cillin, both spybot and spyblaster, and my uninstaller is the original quarterdeck cleansweep.It is a very good product but the company was purchased by symentec (norton) and is no longer sold as original. if you can find a copy i reccomend it.