Which one is real? WinUtilities or TuneUp Utilites? They look awfully the same...

I thought this would be a great package but to me it was a GREAT DISAPPOINTMENT! I ran it, thought I had it set correctly but it wiped out all of my music, podcasts and apps for my iPhone! Back tracked to see if I had something set wrong, didn't find anything. Been a computer nerd for 30 years so kind of know what I'm doing. Very disappointed; THANK GOD FOR BACKUPS! DON'T RECOMMEND THIS ESPECIALLY FOR N00Bs!

yeah i had the same problem last year its so frustrateing, i figured they worked the buggs out, but no....

i had to do a complete system restore and reset my bios, for some reason dont ask me why but thats the only way it fixes itself.... otherwise it carries over bad keyboard drivers....

no idea how it dose that because i completely delete my hardrive clean and reinstall my OS.

Hi Folks,

MegamanXD..

While I am leaning to the view that the whole wo.exe thing may well be a false alarm, it is situations like yours that create a real alarm.

With some companies like Piriform (CCleaner) and AceLogix you at least have a public forum, forcing a level of accountability. They do not want to hose systems .. they will get many very irate posts on their forums. (This can be a free product or paid.) On the other hand when a utility package is sold or distributed and there is no public discussion and strong support contact, then everything is pretty much invisible. If dup file cleaning crash out system files, you can only find out by scouring the internet, if the registry cleaning deletes aggressively or stupidly, similarly .. who can tell.

Thus I would never use such a package .. unless there is a public and strong support structure. Which WinUtilities does not have.

Shalom,
Steven

For some reason every time i use this software it totally messes up my drivers and my registry..... and this is the only cleaner that dose that
i had to do a complete OS reinstall to fix my computer.....

and i did try using the recovery options, no dice....

i use Ccleaner and tuneup utilities 2007 and never had any problems

I use an awesome freebie that I found called Diskmax, by John Koshy. The first use, it deleted almost a GIGABYTE of crap of my XP driven pc. This was after using the disk cleaner on windows. You can get it at Koshyjohn.com. It is amazing to me that it's free, but this software here seems to be useful too.

wo.exe results at virustotal = clean

http://www.virustotal.com/analisis/7628288a0454cff70da34d0f8ce15c99c6fd4944987f378528deb2628227c8ea-1247245276

WO.exe is the system tray menu that allows you to launch the utilities (try to click or right click on the icon in the system tray).

You can right click and shut down wo.exe from the exit menu. If you run wo.exe again - the menu and icon will reappear.

Open the file wo.xml in notepad - to see the definition of the menus that are displayed.

It is in the registry to add the icon etc during startup so the menu is conveniently available.

If it remained on your pc after an uninstall - it is probably because you didn't fully shutdown the program (right click - exit WinUtilities) and so the files were in use and windows was unable to delete them.

This is standard behavior for how windows works.

There is a trojan/spyware called web offer with a filename also "wo.exe" - but that is where the similarities end. If your spyware software is detecting an infection - it is probably getting detected based only on the filename and perhaps the fact it is being loaded from hklm. I'd suggest checking it with something else.

Try renaming the file to something different (so the dependency on filename is removed) and just scan it's contents. You could also check the file on http://virusscan.jotti.org/en or http://www.virustotal.com/

Had the installed on Win XP sp3, W2k sp4, & W98se. I uninstalled on all syatems. ALL had wo.exe still in HKLM run, and only W98se removed wo.exe from the system. Why after uninstalling would something be left installed and running! Have put this on my blacklist.

MPCDR

#154 Another little help.....The Defrag gives a Report that lists the 25 files that take the MOST space on your HDD. Very interesting! Specially when you find files that you never knew of and are from some 5 years ago! Plus point for this guys from YL Computing.
The Duplicate File Finder, on the other hand, shows some little problems:
- it lists duplicate files in PAIRS with same 4 variables: time, size, name and usage. What happens if there are 3 files of the same? What am I supposed to delete, one of the two or both? Maybe one of them is important? If it found 600 of them, how can I mark for deletion all of them? Right now it forces me to click on each and everyone of them. Tedious!
Still, better than CCleaner!

I downloaded and installed on two Vista 32 Home Premium computers. The graphic representation of the results of defragmenting are very different: on one computer, it appears to have nearly completely done the job; on the other computer, three-fourths of the clusters remain red after the process. The second computer is actually much less cluttered, as I reformatted it's hard drive and newly installed the OS and about 10 other applications recently.

Two Questions:
1) Any idea why the discrepancy between the two computers?

2) When I began to seek help, I decided to visit the publisher's webpage, at ylcomputing, and to my surprise I got a big red X warning from my security software:

Norton Internet Security reports the homepage for the publisher of WinUtilities as being an unsafe site. Specifically, it associates ylcomputing with a keylogger. Has anyone else been alerted to this, or have you had a keylogger installed as a result of installing WinUtilities 7, or, as a result of visiting the ylcomputing webpage?

Other than my concern about security, WinUtilities seems like a dream freebie: I've tried most of the tools, and all seem to do what they're supposed to do.

Thanks to any and all who can add information and comments.

Registry Scorecard

So we end up with 2 or 3 hosed systems (plus whomever was not able to get back online), a few that show the same "fixes" again and again, and a couple of dozen that almost gain a nano-second a year.

Typical for amateur registry cleaning utilities.
Without going into other problems.

Now, back to wo.exe .. especially #138 Dave88 and #149 Bontheweb .. it is possible that the speed launcher would want to be in startup. My concern was expressed above, including the behavior mentioned by PrevX, so it is inconclusive. Conceivably PrevX could mix files together. Only more communication with the quasi-anonymous company, and with PrevX and/or some trace and packet sniffing and process explorer work or your own resource hacking would fully determine if this is mistaken identity or a spyware of concern.

Shalom,
Steven

Am sure it's good software but have bad experience with this. Installed fine on XP SP3 and latest updates, did a registry cleaning which nuked lotsa stuff from my registry, rebooted the system, can't boot properly. Tried many times to no avail, found that winsock was corrupted by this fella! Even reinstall of XP doesn't work, had to register/reinstall Winsock again before my system back to usual.

For me this experience, points given is 2/10.

-Eq-

why is it that everytime i leave a comment, it's never published?

Caused no end of problems - BEWARE! Files and programs corrupted and neither Windows System Restore nor Norton Go Back could restore afterwards (NGB had message saying file changes were too massive and so no points were available).

Just a little help for my friends.....from GAOTD. This program brings 2 Defrag utilities that is, either prompts you to the Microsoft one that comes with your OS or you choose the proprietary one, the one from YL Computing. I tried this one out on a 20 GB HDD and it took over 120 min. to do the job (quite slow). Was it an accurate job? Don't know, have no ways to check it out. But I can tell that it gives you more information while works itself through the maze of files and folders than the infamous MS one that keeps you in the dark (no surprise if it comes from Steve Balmer).

Re: 150 - I did notice that there is a progress bar on the INDIVIDUAL Defrag and it seemS to be working. What I tried b4 and thus reported on is the Defrag section in the '1-click maintenance'.
With the exception of the defrag (which just kept me hanging for a patient 4 hours), all the selections I made in the '1-click maintenance' SEEMED (Key Word) to go thru OK, but then again, so did the Registry Cleaner - until I re-scanned and it found the same ones it supposedily had already removed, so I don't if it actually working or just 'APPEARING' to do so (going thru some motions and giving the selection a check mark that I interpreted to mean it did and completed that task.

i think winutilities 7 is a much better utility than any i have seen
people who did not get it free need to pay for it today, it is that good.

many thanks
robert

I thought this was a giveaway, it's now marked as a trial version

The Registry Cleaner doesn't seem to work. I have it scan, remove and re-scan and it just finds the same ones that it supposedly removed earlier. Why are they still there if it said it already removed them on a previous scan?
The Defragment doesn't seem to work either. There is no indication if it is working or hung up, but I let it run for over 4 hours w/no results!

This software would be improved by including a Progress Bar on the different tasks.
With nothing really happening I haven't found much value in it. Its promises seem bigger than it delivery.

(just got around to trying this after looooong day)
I confirm it installs a "WO.exe"
My WinPatrol Scotty identified that the WinUtilities-7-GOTD was trying to create a new startup item of "Program Files\WinUtilities\WO.exe /autorun" which I told WinPatrol to NOT allow that bit.

Activated itself automatically via a call-out-to-web during installation.

I looked through some of the tabs. One very strange setting is when I looked at the Startup Cleaner, it defaults to selecting EVERYTHING to be Deleted! Pretty bizarre in my thinking, since many of my and your startup items are necessary. For example, if I had just clicked to let it 'clean' them out, I would have lost my Avira Antivirus, my ATI graphics drivers, and other needed items. -that component is badly coded for auto removal of everything.

Not sure about rest, not had time to check it all.

Hope this is a useful "Be Careful!" warning for some of WinUtilities-GOTD users.

#19-Neil runs two different cleaners one after the other. The first one cleans some and then the second one still finds something to clean.His conclusion is that the second one is better because the first one didn’t find the stuff that the second one found.
#47-Carl’s conclusion is differnt about this, he tells us that different things are found because of a different algorithm.
#32-BrainGel however uses the same programm twice. The agorithms are the same both times.
His conclusion is also that the second one is better because the first one didn’t find the stuff that the second one found.
He thinks the program improved itself due to Artificial Intelligence.
#85
At first I thought BrainGel was joking, but when I try, the second run really does find things again.
How about that? I just think AI is a bit farfetched though. This finding is puzzling or is AI really used?

* I think you all are right.
* But you all know that lots of registry hives will be loaded into ram at win startup. Many reg inf will be readed froma disk at windows/programs running time. From where the registry cleaners read the "founded reg errors" is different (ram/disk data), how deeply they analyse the scanned results and their own "deletions". Many of "reg errors" can be deleted only at windows warm or cold reboot and cleaned reg data rereaded into ram after reboot. This means - running cleaners one after one without reboot may did not find anything new and can mess up data.
Allways be careful, as mentioned above - some of the errors can be false positives, modifying your system registry without knowledge can destroy your op-system functionality!!! :)

* Thanks GAOTD for great offer!

The program installed the Yahoo! toolbar on Firefox without asking for me to allow the install. Easily deleted and hasn't been back.

WO.exe, mentioned as a tracking software, quits in task manager when the program is exited through the system tray. Killing wo.exe shuts the program down. I wonder if it's just a naming coincidence.

It automatically forces a restore point prior to deleting registry items. It's cleaned a lot of things from the registry and everything is still working. . . for now.

I have found overall, that CCleaner, does most of this as well, but it's free *shrug*. I am not going to try this, since Window's comes with the other tools, and really anything that automatically fixes the registry really should be shunned. NEVER use an auto registry cleaner, that claims it will boost your speed. If you need to remove something from the registry, manually search what needs to be removed (after making a backup). If you use an auto cleaner, then use it again, it will keep fixing, until your system no longer works.

As for Comodo... I don't trust it ever since I installed their free firewall and it screwed up my system. I couldn't use any firewall and those I did use, would crash. Ended up doing a reformat and reinstall.

This program appears to do absolutely nothing good.

In Windows Vista, running Disk Cleanup (a built in utility) can safely find and delete unnecessary and temporary data without the need to purchase separate programs.

Anyone can use the built-in Windows Defender OR MSCONFIG to manage startup applications, even with the manufacturer name AND a description. This is without purchasing other applications or modifying the operating system in any way.

Brilliant. It didn't pass moderation so I have to post it again.
The ONLY feature in this program which cannot be done directly from Windows (FOR FREE) without purchasing/downloading this software is the secure deletion/undeletion tools. However, there are both freeware and purchasable secure deletion and undeletion tools which perform for that purpose specifically, resulting in a lower price and better quality.

Others will argue that the registry cleaner is somewhat useful, but I found it more destructive as I've (multiple times) ended up with PC's rendered worthless due to various registry cleaners, and here is some very true information from wikipedia. If wikipedia.org is not considered a reliable source, you may go online to many sites which dispute the claims of registry cleaners that have reliable sources. Go to the full article on Wikipedia to see more, and to see the sources cited.

From Wikipedia
"Marginal performance benefit

On Windows 9x computers, it is possible that a very large registry could slow down the computer's startup time. However this is far less of an issue with NT-based operating systems (including Windows XP and Vista) due to a different on-disk structure of the registry, improved memory management and indexing.[8] Slowdown due to registry bloat is thus far less of an issue in modern versions of Windows. More importantly, however, the difference in speed due to the use of a registry cleaner is negligible: rarely do they remove more than a few kilobytes from the total size of the registry. In fact, technology journalist Ed Bott has claimed that no one has ever successfully managed to measure any significant performance increase from the use of a registry cleaner.[9] Any potential user of a registry cleaner must thus balance a probably negligible performance increase against the possibility of system instability. A safer and more measurable approach to registry performance is to defragment the registry files using a Microsoft-supported tool such as PageDefrag.[10]"

"Some registry cleaners make no distinction as to the severity of the errors, and many that do may erroneously categorize errors as "critical" with little basis to support it—a modern form of snake oil.[citation needed]

[edit] Registry damage

Most notably, critics say there is no reliable way for a third party program to know whether any particular key is invalid, redundant or neither. Poorly designed registry cleaners may not know for sure whether a key is still being used by Windows or what detrimental effects removing it may have. This has led to examples of registry cleaners causing loss of functionality and/or system instability.[3][4][5]"

"the .NET Framework platform that does not rely on the registry for application settings.[2]"

All in all, don't become a sucker for so called "performance enhancing software." The built in Windows Registry features are good enough for the average user's needs. This is what I like to call "crapware" because it is software which doesn't actually do anything, and doesn't even claim to. Any internet browser such as Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Opera, and Mozilla Firefox have the ability in the options menu to delete temporary data, cache, and cookies. I'm not impressed by what this program even CLAIMS to do, so I will not be downloading. THUMBS DOWN.

Alternatives:
--~Disk Cleanup (comes with all windows installations) --> to delete unnecessary files and defrag if necessary, deleting unneeded system restore or hibernation data if you wish as well

--~The "Internet Options" menu in IE or "Preferences" in Mozilla Firefox both give options to completely or partially clear cache, browsing history, personal data, and temporary internet files such as cookies/cache.

--~No Registry Cleaner. Works better than having one!

--~Windows can defrag your hard drive as well

--~Any file undeleter and secure deletion program*

And believe it or not, unless you need file deletion/undeletion software, ALL OF THE ABOVE IS ALREADY INSTALLED ON YOUR PC!!!

I installed this and ran it once - btw it IS registered to givawayoftheday.com so it shouldn't time out and the 30 day trial period wouldn't matter for our versions.
I tried to run it a second time and I get an error: "Already running an instance". Any ideas what I should do?

Does what it says. I am not sure if it is better than glary but it is certainly of the same quality. thanks GOTD!!!

In response to #73: I don't think this is the same wo.exe. I think it's the application's main window from which all the different utilities can be launched.

A great program, updated from v. 6.5, works great and looks for different 'errors' 'junk' and 'problems' from other programs I use regularly (including JV16). found an incredible 1800 registry errors, 5000 junk files and 300 invalid shortcuts. ONLY thing I miss is the ability to sort the columns alphabetically by clicking their headings which makes going over and checking the entries much easier. I hope this will be incorporated in the next release. THANKS VERY MUCH! ..........Eldad

Installs easily on Vista X64, nice UI, simple and to the point, does what it says, and QUICKLY, except defrag, the bigger the hard drive, the longer it takes... Comment to those that are saying the program starts up slow, and runs slow, you's must be running a very weak machine, loaded for me in under 5 seconds, I almost didn't download this due to #6 comment of "Slow program startup time (takes about 40 seconds to start)." He must be running a 500mhz, I'm on a quadcore, with 8GB of RAM it runs very smoothly, THUMBS UP on this from me!

Last time when this was on offer it turned in to evaluation version after few months (Registration was successful at the time of installation). This happened on my laptop and desktop as well. I hope the company had worked on this issue this time. Thanks

@ 109, I think you are confusing the winutilities speed launcher wo.exe (which can be disabled in the settings) with another wo.exe "web offer" which is spyware. It is an unfortunate coincidence and they might want to use a different filename for the speed launcher to avoid confusion?

#110 and #115 .. about your "programfiles" folder .. that is exactly why registry cleaners are more dangerous than helpful. (If that was a disk cleaner, then the program is super-dumb.) Why should you have to make hand adjustments (dubious, also, the only time such an adjustment should be made on an installed program is at the time of installation .. sometimes you even uninstall and reinstall if you really want a path change) to catch one incompetency of the "cleaning".

Beyond that .. as I indicated above and reading a bit more, the unannounced spyware is a real deal-breaker. This is a quasi-anonymous company apparently installing spyware without even a checkbox consent, something that has nothing at all to do with the function of the program.

Ferget about it. And thanks to the posters above (Robert Carling #73 and Bob #81 .. and now Mansion Trash #109 .. who realize that this is the Concern-of-the-Day .. and there is no attempt to address this.

I haven't checked, hopefully our reviewers will make note of this spyware issue.

btw, guys, the moment you have a semi-anonymous program calling home with its own .exe, if the developer goes to the dark side he can even inject .dll or spawn new .exe .. and since you have "trusted" the app .. anything goes. This is why I put so much emphasis on really having ongoing communication with the companies and developers of the software I use. Much less likely for any shenanigans, and more peace-of-mind. Now, granted, this company has been around awhile, so it is not like a fully anonymous program trying to gain access, but we know very little about the program, the company, the backers, the future direction. Apparently they are related to the spam industry with some bulk mail program, and they are in the USA and do not speak English .. so again ..

caveat emptor

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Pretty decent app, but I wish it didn't clean out my run history without asking. Make sure you exclude it before running the reg cleaner, if you like to keep your run history.

I'm so happy to see Winutilities again. I very much used this program last time as a GA until I updated by mistake making it not free anymore. So now I'll keep it and won't try to download any updates. It worked well on my XP, easy to use, never a problem. Very useful program. I loved it and I will love this one too.

Thank you GAOT and YL computing.

I installed it. It loaded WO.exe and that seemed to be trying to communicate via the internet. I uninstalled it.

I thought that all the programs here were guaranteed to be spyware free?

See here for wo.exe warnings:
http://www.processlibrary.com/directory/files/wo/
and
http://www.prevx.com/filenames/63190203861201486-X1/WO.EXE.html

Suggestion for developer: Add timing to the tasks, so that users can determine how long a task will take and whereabouts on the timeline the process is. example 750/1012, x min remaining, or a visual bar; something to know if it is going to take a long time or a long time remaining, etc.

Would be great if somebody who has already downloaded and installed WinUtilities 7.0 could test this WO.EXE on a site like www.virustotal.com?

I have this program and it works great. The program is easy to use and does a lot of nice stuff for the computer.
"I really can’t understand why the ‘wo.exe’ issue hasn’t been discussed"
The answer is because it doesnt really matter. I have looked this up, and got this "Some malware camouflage themselves as wo.exe, particularly if they are located in c:\windows or c:\windows\system32 folder. Thus check the wo.exe process on your pc whether it is pest."

This program sits in its own program folder, not the windows folder. Also this from the page to download the file
"Giveaway of the day is adware/spyware-free" End of story.

My two thumbs up.

I see some mentioning WO.exe. If you know how to check your programs, you'll see that wo.exe is the main application to run the program, Nothing sinister about it. Open your task manager, if you know how, and you'll see wo.exe is running when windows utilities is running, nothing else is related to it. I ran all my malware software after installing, and low and behold nothing evil turned up.

I too had a warning on install about the WO.exe file. I quarantined the file and the result was the software would not boot.

I used earlier versions of WinUtilities on another computer with no problem, but this install is on a new computer and I do not want to be tracked.

It would be appreciated if the company offering WinUtilities, YL Computing, would respond here about the WO.exe file?

Per Ignat's (#111) posting: Beware the "Comodo System Cleaner" free alternative. Check out the user comments on this review: http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file/fid,76404-order,4/description.html

Very much appreciated. Works better then ever.

Quick question:
Is WinUtilities 7.0 better then TuneUp Utilities 2009 or which one do you think is better?

114 no, they were not on the desktop

If your running any 64 Bit version of Vista, do yourselves a favor & pass. If not & your feling lucky today, go for it. Just remember how close you are to the cliff before you clean!

Yo! This is great...not kidding...it is working away on my PC and I have not had any problems. Cleaned up lots of files and registry stuff.

Winutilities does a decent job at enhancing your pc. Though the ASC pro and ccleaner are other two option available for free i'd prefer this to the former.It is very user friendly with easy to understand command thanks GAOTD.

Hi,
People are writing about the mo.exe process that is installed. What is not very nice is that firstly, the description for mo.exe at http://www.greatis.com/appdata/d/m/mo.exe.htm indicates that it is dangerous. And secondly that whils mo.exe appears in the msconfig start up configuration, it does not appear in the Win Utilities Start up manager, and that is very sneaky indeed.

Earlier i posted that I thought this was good software, I'm taking that back and removing it right now. It may be one of the best utility suites available, but it stuck something nasty on my machine and that is not allowed to happen.

Do not "update" this program. That is how I lost it the last time it was given out here. After I let it update, I was left with a 15 day trial version.