14 DAY TRIAL // There are plenty of system maintenance tools on the market, but IOBit's Advanced SystemCare seems to top them all when it comes to the range of instruments it incorporates. From protection against spyware to registry cleaning, erasing web surf traces, deleting junk files, optimizing the system or defragmenting it, this suite has it all, and then some.
Apart from these, the set of programs offered by Advanced SystemCare comprises utilities for shaping up the computer into better performance, security-related products or system administration tools. These are either included in the suite or can be downloaded for free from the developer. The best part is that you benefit from all this absolutely free of charge.
Installation completes without hassle; after that, you will have to go through two configuration steps in order to start using the program. This pre-configuration actually consists in choosing the skin for the interface and the working language. However, there is one more thing you have to do before initiating a system scan with Advanced SystemCare: create a restore point to revert to in the case something goes wrong.
The interface is neatly organized to offer access to the modules of the application, which provide the instruments to maintain the system running at optimum performance as well as diagnose some of the problems holding it back. There is also a section sheltering utilities designed for both aforementioned purposes. Moreover, there is an express way to launch all the routines included in both “Maintain Windows” and “Diagnose System” panels, through the “Care!” button.
Maintain Windows
The functionality of this module covers spyware removal, eliminating registry issues, erase web browsing activity and cleaning the system of junk files. You can choose to scan for any of problems individually or for all of them in one run. The same applies when it comes to fixing things in order to increase performance.
Looking for spyware traces completed in a matter of seconds during our tests, mainly because the application scans for a particular set of threats included in a database of its own. It is a simple scanner that shields the system against a limited series of spyware menaces.
In our case Advanced SystemCare detected 13 threats on the system all of them tracking cookies. Unfortunately, when it came to removing them, despite the fact that at the end of repair procedure ASC listed the problems as being fixed, 5 of them appeared at the next scan. We repeated the procedure and each time the app informed us that it took care of the issues while further checkups revealed that the tracking cookies were not eliminated from the system.
The registry cleaner available in this module showed some awesome skills. It detected 186 errors and managed to clear them all, with no invalid file popping up at subsequent scans. The batch of invalid data detected mainly contained entries that would not have a drastic impact on performance, such as empty keys or unused file extensions, but also cleaned missing shared DLLs or invalid uninstallers. During our test all the items discovered by the app were true invalids no longer needed.
Advanced SystemCare offers the possibility to select the registry areas you want to be verified. For this you have to access the settings panel of the application. In case something does not function properly after the registry cleaning session, the product lets you revert the system to an anterior state as it automatically creates a backup with elements removed from the regystry.
However, in our case this did not work properly as not all the entries were restored. Out of the 186 detected issues ASC restored 81, which is less than 50%.Another attempt showed the same behavior.
In Windows maintenance module of Advanced SystemCare also fits an instrument built to erase privacy traces left behind while surfing the web. Privacy Sweep component is ready to scan the system for cookies, browsing history, typed URLs or cache data saved by the most popular web browsers on the market: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari.
More than this, the component is ready to clean the list of recent documents or the history of Run menu. Its functionality extends over a set of applications users are most likely to have installed on the system, such as Microsoft Office, Visual Basic, Adobe Reader, Photoshop, WinRAR, 7-Zip, QuickTime and others.
On the downside, Privacy Sweep does not support the latest version for all the applications, which makes deleting files that can trace your activity on the computer a gamble. However, it is possible that everything works fine although tests have not been conducted with the latest versions of the applications.
The results of our testing in the case of web browsers were not too pleasant, despite us expecting absolutely no problems. We used Opera 11 beta, Chrome 7.0.517.44, Firefox 3.6.12 and Internet Explorer 8 for the job.
In the case of the Norwegian browser Advanced SystemCare had no effect on cache or cookies, leaving everything in place, after multiple runs which showed that there was nothing to sweep. On the other hand, with Firefox everything worked fine, all the cache, history and cookies being deleted from the first run.
We expected the same behavior for Internet Explorer 8, but the application did a sloppy job, leaving behind both cache data as well as cookies. With Chrome only a few cookies were left untouched, while cache was easily eliminated.
One thing Privacy Sweep had no problem with in all browsers except Opera, was deleting browsing history.
In order to configure which areas you want to be purged of private data, head over to the Options screen of the suite and access Privacy Sweep entry.
Junk files will always find a place on the system whether you like it or not, and the location garnering useless data is the Windows temporary folder. The junk file cleaner included in ASC saves you the effort of manually purging the contents of this directory and does it for you.
It will also empty the Recycle Bin as well as the Temporary Internet Files folder, where Internet Explorer holds its cache and cookies. The latter functions the same as faulty as in the case of Privacy Sweep.
