System Mechanic Professional 3 User :: Education by Design Store

Editorial Review
You need more than just security software to keep your PC running right. Without regular internal maintenance even the best protected PC will suffer problems and eventually grind to a halt. System Mechanic 8 Professional contains all of the tools you need to defend against threats, and also keep your PC running smooth, fast, and healthy from the inside out. Fix problems, boost performance, eliminate crashes, defend against spyware, viruses, and hacker threats, and much more. Use one centralized system dashboard to automatically perform all vital PC maintenance. Trusted by millions worldwide, System Mechanic Professional sets a new standard for total PC security and optimization in one integrated package.
Iolo AntiVirus protects against viruses, worms, trojans, and other threats Iolo Personal Firewall protects against hackers, Internet intruders, and other unwanted communication Search and Recover - recover deleted files, photos, email, and more from any drive or media DriveScrubber securely erases data from your hard drive Licensed for use on up to 3 PCs
Cached date: AWS Called=true

Customer Reviews

Version 8 Fixes all Vista issues

2008-08-09
Tried Norton 360, Avanquest System Suite 8, IOLO System Mechanic Pro 7 & 8. Norton has fewer features in its suites every year and forces you to spend more by buying them independently. Avanquest had issues with Vista as did IOLO 7. My experience with VISTA has been that only programs issued after October 2007 were truely "designed for VISTA" instead of "will work on VISTA". IOLO Pro 8 works great on my VISTA Premium. Issues version 7 had are gone. Has every tool you need to keep PC tuned to top shape. Those of you old enough to remember all the features Norton Utilities had back in the 1980's & 1990's will feel that we have finally been given back all the tools that Norton gradually, 1 by 1, took away from us over the years. My only minor concern is that I know it is certified by renowned "Westcoast Labs" for virus protection, but have never seen its antivirus tests compared to others like Norton, Kaspersky, McAfee, etc. I would have liked a comparison. I have never received a virus and frequent updates do automatically take place - unlike version 7. I currently have complete suite on 1 PC and on other PC I have everything except the antivirus and firewall installed. For that I'm using Norton 360. The 360 v2.0 is getting so many bad reviews I'm likely going to uninstall Norton and have a complete install of IOLO 8 on both PC's.

Does not work with Vista!

2008-07-21
I purchased version 7 Pro in early May '08, because of the special pricing and because it had a three PC license. I installed it on my primary machine - a Dell desktop running Windows Vista. It installed fine but I noticed the virus database was marked as outdated. I tried to do an update, and went through the motions - the program indicating that it had updated, but afterward still indicated that the database was over 400 days old (how do you get that outdated on a fresh install)!
I contacted Iolo and they told me to uninstall and re-install, which I attempted. This created another problem. I had a prior version of the included Search and Recover 4.0 already installed on my system, so I did not install this component. I was unable to re-install the SM Pro as long as this program was there. The problem was that I couldn't uninstall S&R using the uninstall on my machine.
I have been in constant contact with tech support but they have only sent links to FAQ's that I have already read. I even got a link for a free upgrade to version 8 but it wouldn't install either. I finally found a means to do a "clean uninstall" via registry editing. This also did not remove the iolo services from my machine. I found a tool from Microsoft to disable these two services. I now had a "clean" machine. I installed SM 8 Pro with no problems - until I tried to run it. None of the applications would work - they needed the ioloSystemService running. I click on the "start service" link under the advanced button of the service tab of task manager, but neither service will start (the other is called "ioloFileInfoList").
I have been continually contacting Iolo tech support with my findings and was upgraded on June 25th to their "senior tech staff". Since then I have not heard from tech support, even though I have continued sending information, requested support, opened new cases, etc. - no word from them.
As part of my experimentation, I installed version 7 on my laptop (running XP) and don't seem to be experiencing any issues. However, my laptop is a backup machine that I rarely use, so it is not a good indicator of how well the program runs.
All in all, I cannot recommend this program. It has definite issues under Vista, it is almost impossible to remove all vestiges of the program once installed, and their tech support is abysmal. I gave Iolo notice that if I don't get any more than an automated response to my last support request, I will be demanding a full refund. The program had great reviews, but if it doesn't work, then it's worthless.