Fix It Utilities 11 Professional (PC)

Fix it Utilities 2011
I have had various incarnations of this package for the past 4 years. Each new addition adds lots of new features and things seem to speed up as the software gets more mature. Earlier versions of this software were sometimes a bit hit and miss at whether they solved the problems on a machine or indeed added to them. I can report that this version does most of the clean up options without user intervention and it does work well on my machines. It did a few repairs on my new machine but I did not see any improvement in speed but stability has increased in Windows 7 so full marks there. On an older single core laptop that had become almost unusable due to being so slow the software brought it back to life and certainly increased its speed in all operations and it has been very stable with no more grinding to a halt and blue screens. On some other machines it has increased speed a little but mostly has stopped them crashing and locking up. It seems to do more with XP and Vista than Windows 7. With Windows 7 I do not seem to get the same slowing up or inconsistency I do with my XP and Vista machines so I think Windows 7 is more stable and does not suffer slow down as much as its old incarnations did. When using any `system software' I would recommend backing up the registry first and creating a system restore point just in case something goes wrong and a blue screen and cryptic stop error is produced. SO far this software is much more grown up than previous versions and it certainly does a good job of system housekeeping. I did not install the antivirus and spyware removal options as I already have Kasperskey running and I am happy with that. Overall, this is very useful in keeping your system running smoothly and stops serious problems occurring. The package comes (unusually) with a small manual which details most of the functions. I would recommend this to anyone with some knowledge of how Windows works as it offers a set and forget interface. The system performance meter is useful and tells you when system performance is dropping and suggests what to do about it. This package can be used on 3 machines which makes it good value. A very useful package from Avanquest.
AMMENDMENT 29 Sept 2011
It also has a bootable disk sector incase Windows won't boot, it attempts to fix the master boot record and having used this today found it works and my Windows booted fine after it had done its stuff which makes this package even more useful now.

I'll be honest with you, the BEST way of keeping your PC in tip-top condition is to simply be VERY vigilant about what you let on there and what websites you visit. Nothing, no program, no package, no software can better your own common sense when it comes to PC health. Stripping your hard drive down to the bare minimum and deleting all bloatware is the best start.

For those of you who enjoy quick-fixes to long-term vigilance I recommend the Fix-It Utilities package beyond all others in its price range. With lots of tools and diagnostics at your disposal you're sure to root out much of the most common bugs and faults. Run it once a week and within a month you'll notice a sharp step-up in your PCs performance.

The Short Version
This is a long review, but there are a lot of features on this piece of software. This review was written while I was installing and testing the software - as I thought it might be useful for you to experience my frustrations and joys as I proceeded with it. If you want to cut to the chase, don't bother with it.

The Long Version
System Requirements on the box differ from those in the instruction booklet. 256MB RAM doubles to 512MB after you've purchased it. Windows XP on the box becomes Windows XP SP2. 170MB of Hard drive free space becomes 250MB. Also specific browsers required, but not mentioned on packaging.

Installation took about 20 minutes.

On the first run it claimed I had 17 problems.
4 of these were because I chose not to use Fix-its antivirus/malware protection since I'm quite happy with what I already have (Avira and AdAware) and in my experience antivirus software is what most readily screws up or slows down a System. In my opinion these are not problems, they are just choices.

7 were disk defrags that needed running. Last time I ran the built in Windows disk defrag it was going to take four days (based on two hours of monitoring), only after 36 hours it gave up and said it couldn't defrag any more. So I'm not too keen on defragging.

The rest were Start-up file optimiser, registry fixer, Temporary files cleaner, internet speed scan, memory optimiser and windows optimiser.

In order to `fix' a problem you have to untick all the problems you don't want fixed (the default is ticked) but there is a generic untick everything at the top of the page. Then you tick the ones you want fixed, then you click go.

While running the Start up files optimiser I had a new program request access to the Internet. Nothing to identify it as part of Fix-It. Google said it was part of Fix-it, so I okayed it.

Startup optimiser completed quite quickly, said it had fixed everything and there was a link to click for a report. The report just said the task had completed. I really like to know what changes are being made to my System. A report is something that details changes. Not impressed.

Now after completing the first task I went back to run the next one and all the remaining tasks had been ticked again. Annoying! That's when I discovered an icon with a meaningless squiggle on it that apparently means `stop monitoring this problem' great stuff. Click on this and the `problem' disappears. But every time you click on this all the other problems get ticked again grrr!!!

It's now an hour since I opened the cd drawer to install this and It's 16% into the second task. Might as well get some ironing done while I'm waiting.

20 minutes later 1900 registry errors have been found and repaired. My request for the details produced a message from Windows stating that `Fix-it.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.' Not what you want to hear about a nice new piece of software you've just installed that's supposed to be fixing all sorts of problems with your PC. It certainly suggests that some serious bugs still remain in this software.

Think I'll do a shutdown/restart and see if there's been any improvement on the 30 minute boot-up after the registry clean and start up fix. And in the meantime I'll get some lunch.

Boot up after registry clean-up and start-up clean-up took about 5 minutes longer than usual and included a worrying 15 minutes on the Windows Welcome screen. Running processes still 59, so the start-up clean-up seems to have left everything just the way it was.

So two hours after inserting the disc there has been no noticeable performance improvement and I have one extra start-up program Fix-it has inserted itself into the Tray, when there is nothing I've asked it to do that requires it to run in the background. Firefox browser just as slow to open.

Re-opening Fix-it I see it knows it's fixed two problems but it only `remembers' the details of the one where it didn't crash.

Clicking on the tab marked System Snapshot gives me a graphic display of the free space on all my drives (7 altogether). I like this. I have to use windows explorer and `Properties' them one at a time to obtain this information. At last something I like. It also informs me of each drive's SMART status. I have no idea what this is. But what I have noticed is that since the update I'm typing away on this review and for whole lines worth of text nothing is changing on the screen. This is new - and something I really don't like.

For the last five minutes it has been calculating de-frag status on all drives and total start-up items. 10 minutes and it has the information for me. 4 drives with high fragmentation. Ok that's 2.5 hours of my life gone with no improvement in system performance and I've currently got some sort of `Active Intelligence' running because I clicked on the Problems (4) button to run the next option - I thought it already knew what it hadn't done???? Isn't some part of intelligence to do with remembering what you've already done and not wasting time doing it again?

While I was waiting I looked up SMART it's to do with predicting hard drive failure by monitoring spin-up time and temperature of drives. This sounds like something handy to have but you can get it without buying Fix-it. Still I'm reassured that my drives are not exceeding SMART thresholds - great news!

Bored now...

Scan finished - just another 10 minutes and surprise surprise it found exactly the same thing it found last time it looked.

Apparently my memory is not optimised (listen what's talking). Optimisation was instant, but needs a reboot to actually happen. That's another 40 minutes (10 to go down, 30 to get back up again) that I'm not prepared to give up to check what difference that hasn't made.

It's going to fix my Internet speed now. But I have to shut down Firefox first and to be honest I thought broadband speed was in TalkTalk's hands but let's give it a go.

`Your Internet Speed settings could not be completely optimised. We recommend you shut down any open web browsers and try again'

There are no `any open web browsers' to shut down so I guess that option's a bust too.

What's left? Windows Optimiser - that sounds scary but I've come this far...

All the windows optimiser has done is disable the Error Reporting Service - that's the thing that popped up to tell me Fix-it had a problem and needed to close. But, again I need a shut down/restart in order to enjoy the benefits of not knowing when stuff has crashed.

All that's left is the temporary files cleaner and Windows does that easily and adequately and with a lot more information about what it's doing, what you are going to lose, and what the risks are So I'm going to let Windows do that one..

I ordered this Fix-It software quite a while ago and it's been sitting on my waiting-for-review pile for a couple of months. That's partly because I have little faith in these things to live up to their claims and partly because I'm scared of something screwing up my system. However, my System is now so slow that I felt I had little to lose and was hopeful that Fix-It just might pull something out of the bag.

It hasn't.

Quite a few of Its features appear to be just accessing Windows functions anyway that you can use just by rooting around in Control Panel - or just asking Google a `How do I... question.

I wanted two things - faster boot up time, and faster response times while using the computer.

This hasn't happened so I can't recommend this. It's taken three hours to run the main features on a four year old computer that was pretty much state of the art when new, but is now really slow and running XP.

I have no reason to believe there's anything better out there, but there was nothing in this that I haven't previously been able to do for free with a little research.

Not recommended.