14 DAY TRIAL // Tools Module
The section brings forward a bunch of instruments designed to increase the performance of your computer by eliminating unnecessary data, enhancing hard disk responsiveness and gaining more system speed by cleaning the registry of invalid entries.
With the Internet Cleaner, things are pretty simple: you will be able to eliminate temporary files left behind by Firefox and Internet Explorer, as well as the set of cookies accumulated during a normal web surfing session. In the case of Microsoft's web browser, Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 will remove temporary files, cookies, history list and typed URLs. In the case of Firefox, all cache will be emptied and the list of visited websites eliminated.
In both cases, the job will be successful only if the web browsers are closed. Otherwise, there will be leftovers, especially with Internet Explorer. The feature is not particularly powerful and its major flaw is that it supports only two major web browsers, as Opera is completely left out.
Invalid shortcuts are also dealt with by the application and in this sense you can choose the locations to be scanned: start menu of both current user and all the users of the computer, workplace of the current user and of all users of the computer. You can enable the search on network drives and removable ones to restrict the task only to local computer.
Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 lists all encountered shortcuts, but it will segregate invalid entries from skipped and valid ones, allowing you to select only those belonging to a single category. Viewing them is also customizable as it can display only those belonging to a certain class.
The application has a nice and easy way to deal with them and, judging by the returned results, accuracy is held high. Getting rid of invalid shortcuts, especially of those in Start menu, will improve Windows load time and leave you with clean and valid start items.
Moving on to empty folders removal, Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 proves to be a reliable companion doing a great job. It can scan all drives available on the system, including the removable ones, as well as user-defined directories. During our testing, the software accurately pinpointed all empty folders we fed it and did a recursive scan as well, rooting out all void folders.
What is more important, upon removing the folders, you will have to be sure that they don't belong to any software that may need it later for storing temporary files or anything else. That is why there is a list of folders to be skipped: hidden folders, write-protected ones or system folders. As a precaution, the application can create a backup to be restored in case some sensitive directories have been deleted.
Duplicates are most times annoying stuff that cannot be eliminated too easily from the system as you never know all locations the same file is saved in. Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 can partially deal with the problem. Although it is not quite a force in duplicate removing, it makes for a good detective if only certain criteria have to be met, such as name, size, content and date, all at once for the app to pin the duplicate. This comes as a downside, as it would greatly increase the flexibility of the software and benefit the user if one could perform duplicate searching by adding a single criterion at a time and is not confined to using either the name/size/content or name/size/date combinations.
The dupes are easily hunted down by the application provided that the file meets one of the above mentioned combinations. As a safety measure, just like for empty folders elimination, Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 makes backups for the files just in case they might be missed by an application.
With temporary files elimination things are pretty simple, considering that you can add just about any folder to be emptied. More than this, you can define the types of files to be removed in each of them with the slightest effort. There are entry-editing options that support a brief description, providing the search path and set up the file format to scan for. Backup is provided in this case as well, so you can recover all the files easily and effortlessly.
Hard disk defragmentation on the other hand worked like a charm. Based on the Magical Defrag engine, the option in UnInstaller 3 can handle multiple drives at a time, performing a very good job. A graph shows the progress and the file level situation on the disk. The legend in the left explains all the color codes, so there is really nothing left unattended.
The procedure is simple enough for anyone to handle, as all you have to do is to select the drives to be defragged and start the process. After this, the application will take care of everything with utmost responsibility. Results of our testing have shown the power of the defragmenting engine to be an extraordinary one, regardless of the size of the processed drive, although this and the amount of data on it play an essential part with regards to speed of the operation. On the downside, stopping and pausing the process have exactly the same command, the only difference consisting in the representation icon.
Registry Cleaner is the last instrument available in Tools module. Its purpose being obvious, the registry coverage is what is more interesting. The truth is that there is nothing standing in the crowd as all entries are regular ones. The tool will look for file formats association, scan COM/OLE/ActiveX section, search the shared DLLs, Fonts, System Sounds, Help files, Application paths, Icons, MRU, empty Open-With section and Windows History list.
Scanning all these areas will not guarantee that the registry is squeaky clean, but will definitely release it of some junk and contribute to the overall improvement of the system speed. Our recommendation is to use more than one registry cleaner for a more thorough job and better results.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
This is the final one in the application and brings you more assistants and tools to help in better preserving the condition of the system. Just like in the other modules, hovering the mouse over an option will give you a brief description. The module provides a nicer way to initiate Windows restore points and choose an earlier configuration of the system to revert to. The best part is that you can easily create your own restore points whenever you want, without letting the system automatically take care of this.
The feature worked great on XP, but in Vista, however, there was a little problem with turning on and off. Although System Restore was active on the test computer, Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 showed otherwise, but still let us create the marks with no problem.
System Service managing is another instrument present in the management module of the UnInstaller and its purpose is to bring within easier reach all the services available on your computer. The improvement consists in the fact that you no longer have to reboot the machine for the changes to take effect and any service can be stopped, deactivated, or started with a single click.
You will benefit from the same description as in Windows' Computer Management console, with absolutely no difference and you will also be able to set up the start type (automatic, manual or inactive). It is just an easier way to gain access to the list of services and to manage them.
Internet Explorer Add-Ons section simply lets you handle all extensions integrated in Microsoft's web browser. It is an easy way to find all of them and activate, de-activate or even delete them. The list of BHOs will contain all parts currently available in Internet Explorer and you can decide which one stays and which goes. There are no context menus, just the three buttons in the left hand side of the screen, for a proper management.
Backup section is one of the greatest disappointments in the suite, as contrary to our expectations, the feature will just copy files from one location to another. There is no encryption and no compression as the software uses the copying method as a way to protect your files and folders. They will all be placed in the location defined in Settings section of the Overview module or jump to it straight from Options of this menu.
The only good thing about this section is that you get to define the folder to backup and the file formats the software should include. This means that in a folder with multiple file formats you can choose only a certain type to be copied to the safe location. Other than this, there is absolutely no upside, as all data can be corrupted by malware infections just as easy.
During the process of performing a backup, you have no clue on the progress of the operation, except for the status in the lower part of the screen that shows the currently processed folder and file, and provides insight on the total number of data to be processed.
Restoring backups, on the other hand, deals with bringing back all the deleted duplicates, empty folders, and temporary files in Tools module's menu. They are sorted out by date and labeled according to the type of files included in the archive (they are applied ZIP compression).
Additional functionality is injected in the program with the integration of an engine that checks for invalid installation entries. It will actually sweep the computer for remnants left behind due to incomplete uninstall of various software. During our testing, the instrument showed that it could discern quite well between valid and invalid entries as the list displayed after the scan clearly pointed out both invalid and valid items.
The most important features and options, like installing, uninstalling and re-installing an application or saving the current configuration and compare logs, can be easily accessed from Installation Monitor's system tray at a right click. This makes all the overwhelming options in the main application window repetitive and somewhat hard to reach, especially when the Installation Monitor starts with Windows.
Another handy feature is the drag and drop icon created on the desktop, that allows uninstalling of software by simply dropping the desired shortcut on it. The catch is that it works only for Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 logged software, so previously installed apps cannot be removed with a drop.
Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 may seem like full service from Ashampoo, but a closer look will uncover an unfinished business. The application is in serious need of a brush-up as there are plenty of loose ties to be taken care of. The least important of them relate to the simple translation to English of the software. There are some spelling mistakes here and there and occasionally you will bump into a German one.
However, not all instruments and tools that come with it are top notch, and for an uninstaller it seems a bit too much and some users may even consider all additional tools a huge bloat. The backup option for files and folders is the most disappointing of the choices as all it does is copy the original files to another location. Looking on the bright side, we encounter the Installation Monitor that can automatically detect "setup" and "install" executables (you can add more names to be monitored) and intervene when they are deployed by logging the soon-to-be-installed software.
The Good
Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 does a great job with logging software installation for a future clean uninstall, thus allowing you the testing of various apps without making a compromise in system performance in case of incomplete uninstall.
It comes with a full set of tools designed to maintain the system at optimum performance parameters and to allow the user easy maintenance.
Documentation for all instruments included in the suite and various operations the user may deploy is simply amazing. Both the interface as well as the help file contain details on how each feature works and its benefits. With harder-to-digest options the software provides full advice on how they should be set.
Users can re-install a previously uninstalled application with the utmost ease, provided that you instruct UnInstaller to create a re-install file.
The Bad
The size of the suite is one of the downfalls of the application. Some of the modules offer the same options, but presented differently (the uninstallation option is present in several modules - Overview and Actions - as well as in Installation Monitor).
Manual uninstall is difficult and requires good knowledge on where the software in question is dropping its files upon installing. In this case, everything is left to the user who has to define all entries that need to be deleted, from files and folders to registry items.
File and folder backup options consist in nothing more than simply copying the data from their original place to a user-defined one. They are not processed in any way, leaving them vulnerable to malware.
The Truth
Ashampoo UnInstaller 3 is very close to offering full service when it comes to cleaning the system and maintaining it at high performance standards. However, the multitude of modules is overwhelming and having the same option implemented in several sections may leave the user confused.
Its basic purpose (complete uninstall of software) is gracefully achieved and it does a very fine job in this sense. However, a better organizing of the features and options, as well as having a clear cut separation between what each module offers, would greatly improve it.
Backup option for files and folders does not protect the data in any way, but simply copies it to a new location. You have to appreciate, though, that it creates backup files (which are compressed to ZIP) for almost everything it eliminates (temporary files, duplicates, empty folders) so, in case something goes wrong, you can restore them.
All in all, the application does a fine job with clean uninstalling of software and almost all additional tools are useful, but a brush up is necessary to make all options easier to handle and infuse more flexibility for all instruments included.
Back to the first four modules
