We all know how easy it is to mess up your computer with viruses, spyware, and registry problems. In fact, it is so easy and wide spread that a whole industry has been created to fight against the problem. Uniblue is one of the companies that is creating software for these problems. Their latest offerings include RegistryBooster 2, SpeedUpMyPC 3, SpyEraser and PowerSuite.

Features

• Clean, repair and optimize your system’s registry.
• Maximize system performance, Internet speed and computer security.
• Protection against privacy threats.
• The complete package to manage your system’s stability, performance and security.

I previously reviewed SpyEraser so I won’t cover it again. Also, PowerSuite is not really a program, it is actually all three programs together. So I will focus on the other two programs.

Registry problems can cause a lot of issues with your computers stability and speed. It seems that the longer you have a computer the slower it gets and the more it crashes. After a while it may get so bad you will have to reinstall the operating system. Instead, you could use RegistryBooster 3 which performs scans of your registry to check for errors and conflicts, then repairs and optimizes the registry for peak performance and stability.

In addition to registry problems, a computers performance can be affected by disk clutter, programs that start up when you start your computer and many other things. SpeedUpMyPC 3 lets you monitor and control all your PC resources. System settings, Internet usage, disk clutter, RAM and CPU are all automatically scanned, cleaned and optimized for peak performance. You can also selectively disable or remove unnecessary background and auto-start processes to cut valuable seconds off your startup time.

Power Suite combines all three of Uniblue’s products, RegistryBooster 2, SpeedUpMyPC 3 and SpyEraser. The only things that are not included are an antivirus and firewall program. If those were included you would have a complete solution for keeping your computer safe and stable.

Design

Each one of the programs is laid out the same. There are a series of tabs across the top of the screen with the main screen below. The left side has some information about the status of your computer.

RegistryBooster 2

RegistryBooster 2 is a program that will clean up your registry. This is necessary because often when you install and uninstall programs information can stick around and cause problems. It would be nice if Windows would provide tools to keep itself clean, but since it doesn’t we have to rely on programs like RegistryBooster. With RegistryBooster you can do things like scan the registry for problems and fix them and defrag the registry.

The first screen that you see when you start RegistryBooster is the main screen and it shows the health of your computer on the left, and the status of the last scan in the middle. There are tabs across the top to access the different features. The big scan button in the middle is for starting a registry scan.

The registry scan screen lists all the items that the scanner will look at. As it goes through each item it will put a check mark or a red X next to each item. The check mark indicates that no problems were found, the red X indicates that a problem was found. Once the scan is finished it will display a dialog that says how many problems were found. After that you are shown the results of the scan and given the option of fixing those problems.

Before you begin the repair you are given the option to back up the registry. Even if you choose not to, the parts that are changed are still backed up so that you can restore any of the changes. After the backup, the repair process will begin and there will be a progress bar that goes across the screen to indicate the repair process. After the repair is complete a dialog will indicate that the repair is done and the next screen will show how many problems there were and how many were fixed.

Another option is to defrag the registry. Defragging the registry is like defragging a hard drive. It moves everything together which speeds up access to the information. Like repairing the registry, a progress bar will indicate the progress of the defrag and when it is done you will need to reboot your computer before the changes take effect.

If for some reason the changes go wrong and mess up your registry, you have the ability to restore to any period that was saved by the scanner. All you have to do is click on one of the items in the list and click the restore button.

Under the settings tab you have the ability to change some simple things like startup options, and backup options. There are also additional screens for setting up ignore lists and viewing logs. Logs can be helpful if you want to know exactly what the repair process changed.

SpeedUpMyPC 3

The other program in PowerSuite is SpeedUpMyPC 3. This program does things like optimize your memory, clean up and shred files, and uninstall programs.

The main screen that you see when you first start up SpeedUpMyPC 3 is like the first screen of RegistryBooster. It shows the health of your system, and lets you start a scan. You are also shown the status of the last scan that was run. The scans include Memory, CPU, and Internet optimization, Privacy and Junk file cleanups.

The scan process will go through and indicate when each area is scanned. When the scan is done you will be shown a screen that will show if the area needs to be optimized or if there were files found that need to be cleaned up. You have the option to not clean up an area if you don’t want it cleaned. Clicking the optimize button will start the process and a progress bar will indicate how far it has gone.

The next tab over is the Optimize tab. Here you have the ability to check and optimize Memory, CPU, Disk, Internet, and Startup.

The Memory optimization screen shows your current memory usage and gives you two options for freeing up ram. The Free Up RAM option works quickly to realease unused memory. The Deep RAM Recovery option, like its name suggests, scans deeper for memory that it can free up. I don’t know where SpeedUpMyPC goes to free up ram, but as you can see from the picture below it was able to free up a little bit of RAM.

Like the Memory screen the CPU optimization screen shows your current CPU usage. The only button on the screen is called Application Booster. Pressing this button will take you to a new screen that shows you all the currently running programs. Next to each program is a indicator bar and plus and minus buttons. When you press the plus or minus buttons it causes the indicator bar to grow or shrink. This indicates how much CPU priority each program has, the longer the bar the higher its priority.

The Disk screen reports disk usage, but there are no changes that you can make.

According to the name you would think that the Internet screen would report Internet usage. It really does not show only Internet usage, it shows all network traffic. If Uniblue wanted to, it would not be very hard for them to filter out just the traffic on port 80. The graph on this window can be changed to show either 1 minute or 1 hour worth of use. On this window you can optimize your Internet connection for your particular connection settings. You do this by selecting your network card and modem speed and when you click the optimize button the program will adjust your settings. You can also set things back to default with the click of a button. The screen below is the network usage of copying a big folder with lots of files between two computers on my network.

Startup is the next screen. Here you can see a list of all the programs that are set to start when the computer starts. This list includes all the programs that are listed in the registry run list and the start menu Startup folder. You can also add, delete and edit any of the starting programs. When you change or add a program you can select where you want the record stored, there are 10 locations in all.

Next we move on to the Clean Up tab. The first option on this tab is File Clean Up. Here you can run scans that will search for Temporary Files, Lost Clusters, Dump Files, Backup Files, and Other Junk Files. The scan is usually quick and when the scan is done you can either ignore the scan or click the Clean button to fix the problems the scan found. Clicking the detailed view button will show you the files that the scan found.

The privacy section is just like the File Clean Up. It will scan through the computer looking for certain files like cookies, temporary files, and other things that may compromise your privacy. Everything else is also very similar, the scan process goes through the list of items and when you get to the results tab you can either clean up the files, view detailed information about each item, or switch the window and ignore the scan.

File shredder is not a scan like the last two, instead it is a way to securely destroy files so that they cannot be retrieved at a later time.

Uninstall is simply a way to remove programs from your system. This is just like the built-in uninstaller that comes with Windows, except this one claims it will remove all the fragments that are usually left behind when you do an uninstall.

The settings tab is very simple. The general screen gives you options for choosing some program settings like if you want SpeedUpMyPC to start when the computer starts. The Clean Up screen settings determine how files are deleted when you get rid of them through one of the scans that are in the program.

Performance

Running the software is really easy to do. A lot of the functions are automatic, the rest can be run with the click of only one button. As I ran each program I never experienced any problems, and I felt really good because any time one of the programs made a change there was usually a backup made that would restore any changes made. In case there was a problem I always knew that I could go back and undo the changes.

The programs were very quick and responsive. I never had to wait for them to startup and I never had to wait very long for the scans and repairs to complete. Both SpeedUpMyPC and RegistryBooster set themselves to start when the computer starts and that makes things go a lot faster. It also allows the programs to keep an eye on my computer at all times.

One problem that I had was every time I started RegistryBooster, Windows Vista asked me to escalate privileges for the program. I have read many places that this should not happen unless the program is not written to work with Vista correctly. I assume RegistryBooster needs the higher permissions because the program would be modifying the registry. SpeedUpMyPC only modified files and that does not need as high of permission so it never asked me to raise the privledges.

I was very happy with the results of the programs. As you could see from some of the previous images the programs did their job. The scans found and fixed problems that they found, the memory optimizer freed up memory. I don’t have any complaints.

Warranty and Support

You can get support from the company website in many forms. When you first click the support tab from the website you are presented with an FAQ. From this page you can also search for questions, request a lost serial number, and at the bottom there is a contact us link where you can email in support questions.

Conclusion

If after reading this review you are still not sure you want to purchase these products you can download a trial version of these programs. If you have had your computer for a while and it is getting slow I recommend you get these programs. They will help you clean up your computer and regain some of the lost performance. You can buy the programs individually or buy the PowerSuite and get them all in one package. If you don’t need them all it may be cheaper to only buy the ones you need.