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Anybody heard of or use either System Mechanic or SimplePCRepair? They both include driver support modules. A friend of mine has both, swears by them. Me, I’m likely to swear at ’em. Comments?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Hey Paul! Thanks for your gracious reply, I changed my post after realizing that I left off some stuff.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Talking about a clean copy of Google Chrome, has anyone downloaded and installed the Google Chrome StandAlone? I’m at work, don’t have the download URL or version handy. I was able to install this StandAlone, it seems to not be in my face as much. HitmanPro keeps having to delete the search.conduit [which is nestled within Google Chrome somewhere] stuff though.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Spybot 1.62 is what I also use at home. Shofar, it’s free, donations are welcome though, to them, not to me. Free versions of Avast, MalwarebytesAM, etc., while having the same database as paid versions, do not have as deep configuration options.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Yes, you’re correct; I was assuming your registry defrag tool also included a choice to clean the registry before defragging the registry. My Wise Registry Cleaner also has the defrag option, which I much earlier tried…the circle went roundNroundNround – finally I stopped it – and never did that again. Once, while running Windows for Workgroup 3.11, I ran a regDefrag, and I was never again able to backup or restore the DOS-based Windows system and user DAT backups again
[For you dos-geeks, remember loading the config.sys with drivers and stuff?]

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Can one of you help me out with this: I have Emsisoft and Avast set to remove and quarantine a whole zipfile rather than auto-fix or remove only the problem. Have you had great success with auto-fix of a zipfile [cotaining several or many files]? I’m not exactly sure just constitutes a PUP to Avast and Emsisoft. Should I start a new thread?

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Thomas, you are right as rain! However, some of those installs have very tiny print, and Unchecky helps me out, while I pour through the teeny tiny print…

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

I was answering a previous poster who did not like all those optimizers
I use Auslogics Registry & DiskDefrag, Wise Registry, PluginMgr, Disk Cleaner, RegSeeker, CCleaner, Norton Utilities 16 consistently, well ok, 2-3 times monthly. I’m not against specific-purpose utilities at all! I will avoid some functions such as registry compactors, and some other thingies.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

re: puzzling behavior of MBAM; is the trail version and the pro version still defaulted to running at any system startup, along with updating itself before the scan? Unless one goes into the configuration and make changes to suit the PC operator? I can’t remember what defaults MBAM Pro had way back when I first installed it.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Mr. Coochin! Nice to meet you! I have been using Comodo Firewall for some time now, guess it’s an ingrained habit of mine since my DOS 3.3/Windows 3.11 days — using a nonWindows firewall. Do you remember Tiny Personal Firewall? Anyway, tell me more about your Windows Firewall experience. My Comodo doesn’t alert me much at all anymore, Firewall & HIPS set to either Training or Safe Modes.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

A comment on Astromenda, I tried a reinstall of Windows Live Mail today and got a panel offering to install Astromenda, immediately got out of that. It became obvious the download carried baggage even though the site used was usually reliable.

In Clark Howard’s Technology section, somebody suggested Unchecky. I downloaded, installed, and have been using Unchecky for a few weeks now. Unchecky removes all checkmarks, except for the desired install, for you. I still look at each “opportunity popup” – to make sure nothing new gets past Unchecky.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Darn toot’n….likewise any form of optimisation tool, like registry cleaner-uppers etc.

Not quite. I have several specific-purpose utilities for registry, disk cleaners, defragger, etc. — they all work just fine when set and operated properly. True, there are some things such as registry compactors I will not use. BootupStartup, system “optimizers” — I’ll continue to pass on those.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Both online fixers and HD-based fixers have mixed reviews, results.
I use several different specific-fixers instead of the SwissArmyKnife ones.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

Don’t online scanners assume one has an internet connection that is not part of a present problem? Sometimes I have to run Windows Repair (All in One) because one of the problems was I had no internet connection with the outside world. Both HD & online choices would be best.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

“Going back way too many years, my own favorite saying has always been “the only bad backup is the one you decided NOT to make”.

Well said! The second bad backup is the one done carelessly and there is no restore possible, discovered too late.

Roland

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted