in message
.
I am having problems with a program I just purchased fro Uniblue
called
Speed Up my PC. When running a program that should optimize my PC's
performance I get an error message and upon reading about possible
solutions
it is suggested I install Win Tasks.
Can you tel me how to procced and I thanks in advance.
http://www.liutilities.com/products/speedupmypc/
Why do you think that snakeoil doesn't provide a reasonable
description of what actions it performs to accomplish that claimed
speedup?
"Maximize your Internet Settings for faster downloading"
Internet Speed Optimizer
Yeah, only if you are using dial-up and then only if your ISP is using
non-standard settings which is highly unlikely. Then the user of this
crap comes asking why they have problems and gets told to do a Repair
on their connectoid to return to the standard values.
"Intelligent Advice to Predict and Prevent System Slowdowns and
Crashes."
"... when you are operating at critical levels, ..."
Yeah, clear as mud.
"Enhanced Security and Privacy Features"
There are tons of these cleanup utilities, and lots of them are FREE.
"Exceptionally Easy to Use"
Yeah, a dummies interface for dummy users.
CPU Usage Overview
You already have that in Task Manager.
Application Booster
Again, clear as mud. Maybe it sticks the executable's path in the
Prefetch folder. With no description, they can claim anything.
Memory Usage Overview
And that means? Do they provide any more details than what Task
Manager shows?
RAM Optimization
Oh Christ, this shit again. See below on "Useless utilities".
Disk Usage
As opposed to using Windows Explorer and a right-click on the drive or
folder? Or using freebie utilities, like TreePrint, DiskPie, or
TreeSize?
Disk Analyzer
A defragmenter is already included in Windows.
Internet Speed Analyzer
And that means? There are lots of free sites where you can visit to
measure your bandwidth, like speedtest.net.
Startup Manager
Geez, there are tons of freebies for this. SysInternals' has their
AutoRuns.
Process Viewer
Again, SysInternals' has their Process Explorer, and it is FREE.
Junk Clean-Up Scan
Oh, goodie, a user that lets a program delete "junk" files which
probably includes .log files but some of which are uninstall logfiles
so later the user wonders why the uninstall won't work. There is
already a Disk Cleanup wizard (cleanmgr.exe) in Windows XP, and it can
be ran automatically using a scheduled task (MS KB article 315246).
Privacy Protector Scan
Detailed Privacy Protector Scan Results
And this is what? Lureware to get you to buy some more of their
snakeoil? Yeah, this must be so important that they have to list it
twice in their features list. They even list some of their program's
settings as "features". Duh!
File Shredder
Yeah, tons of freebies for this, too, like Eraser from Heidi.
Uninstall Manager
For those that are terrified of touching the registry. Don't use them
but others have found freebies for the same thing.
Oh, they list "awards" whether it relates to a particular product or
not; i.e., if any one of their products got some award at a web site
then they list it for all their products. Also, no links for those
awards so you could actually go find them or discover how old are
those so-called "reviews". C/Net is not giving them an "award" simply
because they have it listed at their download.com site. The product
description for the download is the author mouthing what the vendor
told them to say. Apparently x64 users cannot take advantage of their
"magic" since 64-bit isn't supported.
You got suckered. They rolled up snakeoil and freebies into a "suite"
and made you pay for it. Their sucker suite ****s up and suggests you
go buy another of their products
(
http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/). Uh huh, what a
surprise ... not! Even fish with their limited intelligence know
enough to try to throw the lure and escape. Now you get to see if
those con artists will provide any support. Try the "Contact Us" link
at
http://www.liutilities.com/support/.
Useless utilities - Registry Cleaners
-----------------
Do you have a backup & restore plan in place? When (and not if) the
registry cleaner corrupts your registry and when you can no longer
boot into Windows, just how are you going to restore that OS partition
so it is usable again? Even if you use a registry cleaner that
provides for backups of its changes so you can revert back to the
prior state, how are you going to perform that restore if you cannot
boot the OS after hosing over its registry? What about entries in the
registry that look to be orphaned under the current OS load instance
but are used under a different OS environment? You delete what looks
orphaned only to find out that they are required under a different
environment.
Say there was an unusually high amount of orphaned entries in your
registry, like over 50MB. By deleting it, you would speed up how long
it takes Windows to load the registry's files when it starts up - by
all of maybe 1 second. Oooh, aaah. All that risk of modifying the
registry to save maybe a second, or less, during the Windows startup.
Most folks that clean the registry end up deleting only 10KB, or less.
They are doing nothing to improve their Windows load time. Since the
registry is only read from the memory copy of it, and since memory is
random access, there is no difference to read one byte of the registry
(in memory) from the another byte in the registry (in memory). The
extra data in memory for orphaned entries has no effect on the time to
retrieve items from the memory copy of the registry.
Cleaning the registry will NOT improve performance in reading from the
memory copy of the registry. The reduced size of the registry's .dat
files might reduce the load time of Windows by all of a second and
probably much less. And you want to risk the stability of your OS for
inconsequential changes to its registry. The same boobs that get
suckered into these registry cleanup "tools" are the same ones that
get suckered into the memory defragment "tools".
A registry cleaner should only be used if you yourself can correctly
cleanup the registry. The cleaner is just a tool to automate the same
process but you should know every change that it intends to make and
understand each of those changes. After all, and regardless of the
stagnant expertise coded into the utility, *YOU* are the final
authority in what registry changes are performed whether you do it
manually or with a utility.
