14 DAY TRIAL // System maintenance tools are not miracle workers but they can definitely ease users' jobs at finding workarounds to resolve frequent Windows issues without resorting to the ultimate solution: reinstalling the OS.
Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2014 bundles a wide range of boosting, tweaking, analysis, and general care tools for keeping PCs in shape. While novices can resort to one-click optimization and other automated tasks, power users may configure each part of the modules and evaluate information at the end of each job.
The trial version runs for 10 days and does not impose any limitations. The full package can be purchased for €29.99 / $41.53 (available for 1 year).
Installing the application suite takes minimal effort. However, since it is ad-supported, users should be careful when going through the setup steps, as WinOptimizer offers to download and install third-party components that it does not need to work normally.
The interface has a clean appearance and organized structure, where the “Overview” section provides one-click access to running scans for the cleaning, optimization, and protection modules, showing total number of issues and size for each of them. Initially it is necessary to answer several questions to optimize settings, which pertain to SSD drives, hibernation, Windows indexing service, and old update backup files.
Scan results show the name, extension, full path, and size for each file prone to deletion. Apart from handpicking the exact items to remove and the ones to keep, it is possible to define selected files, file names, or folders of selected files as exceptions.
The Registry Optimizer component aims to identify and remove any registry entries that are no longer associated with anything, in an attempt to boost overall PC performance. It looks into file formats, ActiveX, COM and OLE objects, shared DLLs, fonts, system sounds, help files, application paths, the Start menu, software, history lists, Windows Firewall, and others.
The Internet Cleaner searches for junk files in the installed web browsers and removes any traces of user activity, which particularly comes in handy when multiple users share a PC. It offers support for Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari. The browsers should be closed in order to be scanned.
The defragging tool offers three types of defragmentation (fast, normal, and intelligent), ranging from the quickest but least effective method to the slowest, yet most thorough. An initial analysis on a selected drive shows the percentage of fragmentation, total files and moved items, along with the program's recommendation on whether a defragging procedure should be performed or not. Similar to most defragging apps, WinOptimizer displays a cluster map too.
The program's components dedicated to system improvement include startup and Internet tuners together with service, process, and uninstall managers. The service manager loads a list with all active services that can be turned on and off, showing their start type (manual, automatic, delayed start), status, and rating based on the community's opinion. Double-clicking an item reveals additional information, such as thorough description, services that depend on it, and services it depends on. Furthermore, all services can be rated by different criteria (e.g. not rated, running).
Moving on to the Windows customization category, there are numerous tweaks that can be applied to the OS. They focus on the logon behavior (e.g. logon screen, welcome message), devices (e.g. network, mouse, keyboard), drives (e.g. hide drives, reserve space for MFT), system (e.g. default Windows folders like My Documents, OEM information), desktop (e.g. Aero interface in Windows 7, items to display on the desktop), Windows Explorer (e.g. User Account Control, hibernation), Windows 8 (e.g. boot screen), and so on.
As for file operations, WinOptimizer integrates utilities for encrypting and decrypting files with a password to deny user access (with or without generating a self-decrypting executable), splitting files into smaller pieces to store on discs and then merging them, as well as for shredding files using 1, 3, 7, or 35 passes, in order to prevent specialized software from recovering private data.
The Good
The last tab in the main frame shows overall statistics when it comes to the registry database, database entries, files, folders, and backups. Meanwhile, the maintenance components can be customized in terms of areas/types of items to scan. Beginners can resort to the default settings for system optimization.
CPU and RAM consumption was low during our evaluation, while commands were executed rapidly.
The Bad
A single skin is integrated for the interface.
The app is basically a lesser version of Ashampoo WinOptimizer 10, although the two are equally priced.
The Truth
NOTE: Softpedia and Ashampoo are giving away unlimited license keys for Ashampoo WinOptimizer 2014. One key works on unlimited PCs, has a lifetime availability, and does not have an expiration date for activation. All you have to do is access this landing page. The Easter promo expires on Monday, April 21 at 15:00 UTC (8:00 a.m. PDT/PST), so make sure to claim it by then.
UPDATE: Giveaway over.
