Author Topic: Has anyone tried Perfect Utilities ? (Read 23,184 times)

joiwind · « **on:** September 08, 2009, 10:53 AM »

IainB · « **Reply #1 on:** September 08, 2009, 11:48 AM »

Oh no, not another spam post!

Later edit:
@tomos: I had not read that thread you refer to.

@joiwind: Abject apologies and grovels if I was being premature and cynical, but the DC forum seems to be occasionally plagued by people making similar "Has anyone tried/seen/used [THING]?", with no other reference and followed by a link. They often seem to be spam posts apparently designed to get clicks or to divert to some otherwise useless site. Makes reading the forum a bit of a pain in the rear for me anyway.

I now have DC forum posts feeding into my Google Reader and I read the first line of each new subject posted, but, if it starts with the words ""Has anyone tried/seen/used ...", I tend to switch right off. For that reason, I did not go to read the site you linked to.

tomos · « **Reply #2 on:** September 08, 2009, 11:53 AM »

mentioned in this and previous post fwiw

Quote from: cmpm on August 18, 2009, 01:01 AM

I used some of the functions of Perfect Utilities with no problems. Most of the other functions, which are disabled by default, I use other programs for. I also didn't use all the functions that are enabled by default.

There are some things in the program that are unique. Just have to look around a bit to get familiar with it.

joiwind · « **Reply #3 on:** September 08, 2009, 12:03 PM »

Why "another spam post " - it was just a simple question...

tomos · « **Reply #4 on:** September 08, 2009, 12:31 PM »

Quote from: joiwind on September 08, 2009, 12:03 PM

Why "another spam post " - it was just a simple question...

joiwind -
there's been a lot of spam lately and I know it's easy to jump to conclusions - esp. if you dont look too closely

*

* [edit] meaning he probably didnt look at your post count etc

joiwind · « **Reply #5 on:** September 08, 2009, 12:45 PM »

No problem !

mouser · « **Reply #6 on:** September 08, 2009, 03:59 PM »

not only that, but it appears to be free and donationware -- which we should all support !

Darwin · « **Reply #7 on:** September 08, 2009, 05:21 PM »

Thanks for the pointer, joiwind

This looks interesting - I wonder if it will run under Vista 64? From the screenshots it has the *look* of Ashampoo WinOptimizer.

tomos · « **Reply #8 on:** September 08, 2009, 07:37 PM »

from the same thread I linked to above

Quote from: Carol Haynes on August 17, 2009, 12:58 AM

Has anyone actually tried Perfect Utilities? Going to the original link the same company seem to be selling WinUtilities 7 and giving away Perfect Utilities 2 for free but from what I have read they are identical (apart from the WU skin pack).

Are these good products or are they best avoided? (Yeah I know most RegCleaners should be avoided unless you are REALLY discriminating in what you let them delete but what about the rest of the tools).

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #9 on:** September 08, 2009, 08:31 PM »

Not sure - I installed Perfect Utilities a while ago and ran the scans from it but didn't actually use it to clean anything! Call me chicken (this is where Chris leaps in!)

joiwind · « **Reply #10 on:** September 08, 2009, 09:25 PM »

I must be chicken too - that's why I asked first before trying it myself. Well, maybe not chicken, just wary.

cranioscopical · « **Reply #11 on:** September 08, 2009, 10:54 PM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on September 08, 2009, 08:31 PM

Call me chicken (this is where Chris leaps in!)

I had a response ready but, at the last moment, I decided to pullet.

Innuendo · « **Reply #12 on:** September 09, 2009, 12:05 AM »

Never hurts to be chicken/wary when it comes to reg cleaners. If you don't know what a registry key does or doesn't do it's best to leave it be. A lot of keys are very cryptic in their function & when deleted wreak havoc on one's system. What's worse is that there are a LOT of reg cleaners out there (and I'm not saying the one referenced in this thread is one of them) that just nuke things willy-nilly and then one ends up with some non-functional programs at best and a non-functional OS at worst.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #13 on:** September 09, 2009, 12:21 AM »

I continue to bang the old drum - "you don't gain anything much by using any registry cleaners but you stand to lose a hell of a lot".

OK that isn't totally true. I do poke around in my registry and delete things I know don't need to be there but almost all reg cleaners are designed to maximise the number of items that can be hit (so they look impressive) and don't focus on the items that should be hit. The other big problem I have found in the past (and it is still true today) - if you have any version of MS Office installed there are hundreds of registry entries that reg cleaners want to remove from a fresh install - if you allow it to happen then somewhere down the road there will be trouble.

The same goes for windows itself - try doing a clean install of windows in a virtual machine and then run a registry cleaner - there are hundreds of entries to be deleted before you have done anything at all. I know MS aren't prefect but it is a little far fetched that all of these entries should be removed on a clean, fresh installation.

IMHO if a registry entry is no longer valid (i.e. something has been left behind following an uninstall) then chances are that no application is ever going to look at that key again. It might give a warm glow to know you have deleted the key but it will not make any practical difference to your system in terms of speed or registry size.

Comparisons I read also showed that defragging your registry has almost no impact on speed (but can cause problems with in use entries getting lost or corrupted in the process).

My poultry reference above was actually not so much to do with registry cleaning in Perfect Utilities but some of the other system cleaning tools. I am fairly happy letting CCleaner delete a load of stuff because experience tells me that so long as you select carefully what is deleted it doesn't seem to do any damage. Other file cleaning tools I have tried have not been quite so conservative!

cmpm · « **Reply #14 on:** September 09, 2009, 02:26 AM »

what i've noticed is cleaning temp files helps the most

with xp 2003, i use registry cleaners-Regseeker and Ccleaner

now i'm using xp media center and tried a registry clean
it did not go well
when i finally got it from my son and reformated
reinstalled the system
i ran reg cleaners just to see what would happen
i had to reformat and reinstall

so i agree Carol that regcleaning is trouble
and i won't do it on the xp media center

one thing interesting is the 2003 xp is on a pentium 3
and cleaning the registry helped
but not on the media center

i experimented a lot on the p3
so i do see good results with that system

tranglos · « **Reply #15 on:** November 07, 2009, 12:38 AM »

Looks like Perfect Utilities version 3.03 comes bundled with actual adware / spyware now. Avira won't let the installer run: "Contains recognition pattern of ADSPY/AdSpy.Gen adware or spyware". Thinking it may be a false positive, I unpacked the setup file with Universal Extractor (fantastic utility btw, get it!) to see what lives inside.

Sure enough, inside the installation package lives a file called "rkinstall.exe" - seems to be an installer for Relevant Knowledge, which appears to be a known spyware deal. The presence of the rkinstall.exe file pretty much seals the case. The chance it's just a naming coincidence is pretty slim, especially that the file lives in a separate "temp" folder within the installation package.

Looking at the Perfect Utilities forum, a number of other users have been getting similar warnings from Nod32. The authors have not responded. (From the user comments it would appear that earlier versions of PU did not carry spyware.)

Thanks, Avira!

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #16 on:** November 07, 2009, 01:02 AM »

NOD32 doesn't report errors on 3.02 but it immediately quarantines 3.03 with multiple infections.

I wonder if this is intentional or if the developer has an infection?

Here are the warnings I get from NOD32:

[attachimg=#]

tranglos · « **Reply #17 on:** November 07, 2009, 01:09 AM »

Quote from: Carol Haynes on November 07, 2009, 01:02 AM

I wonder if this is intentional or if the developer has an infection?

I doubt that, since Relevant Knowledge does not appear to be a virus. It's a company, billing itself as a "market research community" — "with over 2 million members worldwide", read: two million infected computers.

From quick googling it seems that when installed, the RK payload pops up surveys for users to fill, as well as sends information home. The author would have to have a deal with Relevant Knowledge to distribute the payload.

On edit: here's the money quote from their wretched website:

Quote

In exchange for participating in periodic surveys on topics of interest to the Internet community, and for having their Internet browsing and purchasing activity monitored, RelevantKnowledge sponsors select software that its members can enjoy for free.

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #18 on:** November 07, 2009, 01:38 AM »

Thanks for the heads up. I guess I won't be updating in the future

tranglos · « **Reply #19 on:** December 21, 2009, 10:04 PM »

I've revisited the thread on the PU forum today to see if there was a response from the vendor - but is seems that instead of replying, they deleted the thread.

On second look, the whole site has changed. The app is now called WinUtilities and sells for $39,99. Well, that's much better than distributing a trojan-infested so-called freeware, but I don't think I'd buy software from them...

MerleOne · « **Reply #20 on:** December 22, 2009, 12:43 PM »

I think there is something close, GlaryUtilities, still free (checked a few weeks ago) and seems quite similar. Or you may try to get the Xmas Giveaway for TuneUp2009 floating here and there.

tranglos · « **Reply #21 on:** December 22, 2009, 12:53 PM »

Quote from: MerleOne on December 22, 2009, 12:43 PM

I think there is something close, GlaryUtilities, still free (checked a few weeks ago) and seems quite similar. Or you may try to get the Xmas Giveaway for TuneUp2009 floating here and there.

Thanks, Merle. I actually have used TuneUp for a long time, but since my somewhat disappointing experience with TunerUp 2010 I've been looking at alternatives.

MerleOne · « **Reply #22 on:** December 22, 2009, 01:30 PM »

I think TuneUp 2009 is still OK.

tranglos · « **Reply #23 on:** December 22, 2009, 02:12 PM »

Quote from: MerleOne on December 22, 2009, 01:30 PM

I think TuneUp 2009 is still OK.

It's fine, but it refuses to install on Windows 7. Only 2010 will install.

MerleOne · « **Reply #24 on:** December 22, 2009, 03:23 PM »

Quote from: tranglos on December 22, 2009, 02:12 PM

Quote from: MerleOne on December 22, 2009, 01:30 PM
I think TuneUp 2009 is still OK.

It's fine, but it refuses to install on Windows 7. Only 2010 will install.

http://www.glaryutilities.com/gu.html seems Win7 OK. I think I tried it once but was not that impressed.