There are two approaches to PC maintenance. The lazy method is simply to wait until something goes wrong and then think about defragging your hard drive for the first time in two years. The second and sensible route is to keep an eye on your machine's health every month, running some manual scans or employing a system utility like WindowsCare to do the job for you.

These days there's a growing number of quality freeware programs being released, and this maintenance and optimisation suite is one of them. It consists of a number of modules which deal with spyware, registry fixing, system optimisation and other issues.

The first thing we noticed about WindowsCare was that it's quick. The program's diagnostic processes and scans generally happen in a matter of seconds, and even a full spyware scan only takes a minute or two. There are actually two spyware modules; the spyware scanner itself and a second form of pro-active defence which locates potential vulnerabilities and fixes them.

Combating malware aside, WindowsCare's main concern is streamlining the PC with its system optimisation tool. This checks over the entire machine for potential problems and possible enhancements. For example, it looks for general problems with the Windows interface, checks settings such as crash control options and optimises your Internet connection by tweaking TCP/IP settings, adjusting the DNS cache and so on.

When we ran the module it came up with a list of 80 suggested tweaks which we duly implemented. This all went smoothly and we were particularly interested in the outcome because on our test machine we've had a long-standing, mysterious DNS problem that we've never been able to get to the bottom of.

Basically, certain web domains just refused to work, so seeing that WindowsCare was making a number of recommendation for DNS tweaks on the PC, we awaited the results with bated breath. And all credit to IObit, the program did indeed solve this problem, a development we were mightily impressed with.

Also included in WindowsCare's library of functions is a decent registry fixer and a startup manager (although the latter failed to recognise a few common applications that we expected it to identify). A privacy sweep utility and junk cleaner round the package off, allowing the user to clean out their documents and surfing history and any miscellaneous disk clutter.

All this is dead easy to use, with just one button to click and scan using any module, and one button to enact any repairs necessary. The only real flaw we came across here was that the program's restore function didn't appear to work properly. However, it did automatically create a system restore point upon installation, so the PC could always have been rolled back to that if anything went wrong (which, we might add, it didn't).

Verdict
A useful collection of utilities including a registry fixer, anti-spyware measures and most importantly a clever system optimisation module that solved a long-standing DNS problem on our test PC. Needless to say, we were pleased with this. The restore function didn't work as intended, but we didn't have any trouble with the program anyway.

Company: IObit

Tags: spyware personal computer microsoft windows windows windows registry adware malware security