Review by D. Brennan

There are a number of PC utility packages out there. Symantec (Norton), Avanquest, System Mechanic, etc all make system utility programs that are supposed to help you remove old programs, de-clutter your hard drive, remove viruses and trojans, recover lost files, securely delete old files, etc.

I found Fix-It Utilities to be similar to what I have seen in the other packages.

Here’s the trick though - DO NOT INSTALL any of these programs in the name of preventative maintenance. Sure - you need antivirus software, but there are simpler programs out there that offer antivirus protection without all of the other functionality (bloat) that comes in these complete utility packages.

This type of program is intended for computers that already have problems. For example, I installed this on an employee’s computer that was experiencing repeated system crashes, was taking 10 minutes to boot up, took 10-15 minutes to shut down and ran just about every program at half the expected speed. In the case of this computer, Fix-It Utilities successfully removed a bunch of old programs, cleaned up the registry to remove mention of retired servers, and made a bunch of other changes. After that was done, I had it securely delete the unused portions of the drive. The end result is that this machine boots MUCH faster (under 3 minutes), hasn’t had a crash since the clean up, and shuts down in less than 5 minutes.

After the maintenance was done, I uninstalled the Fit it Utilities software from the machine as it was no longer needed. I re-installed Symantec antivirus and was done. Uninstalling the software took some time, but no longer than uninstalling other utility packages.

By the way - I normally would have wiped the hard drive and re-installed the OS and apps from scratch with a machine that runs this poorly. In this case there was a particular program used to control a machine tool. The install disc was lost and the machine vendor is out of business so I could not go the reformat route.

To summarize - do not install this if your computer is working fine. If you have problems with crashes and slow speeds, this program may help you. Uninstall it after you are done with maintenance as it has the potential to slow your day-to-day computer activities down if left on ²⁴⁄₇.