R., try running the program as Admin, which is what I just did to double-check that it is still registered and works. Hope this helps ~

Edit: tried the update to 15.22 again and this time it WAS registered. My apologies to developer for any misunderstanding.

Paul Silvan, I think you are not taking into account that giveaways are arranged and installers and often licenses are generated significantly before the actual giveaway date. That means sometimes the developer has released a new minor version update between the installer was sent to the giveawayoftheday team and the giveaway taking place, it's not intended as a scam but just a coincidence and often, like today, where the giveaway bundles installer does not have giveawayoftheday specific licence key hashing seed the giveaway key also works with the current minor version update available on their website.

abe hanna, I found them here: http://www.pcclean.io/winutilities-pro/version-history/. For a little more detail: http://www.pcclean.io/category/winutilities-version-history/.

abe hanna, you can check this page for version history http://www.pcclean.io/category/winutilities-version-history/

mountainvision@gmail.com, do you realy enjoy publishing your email address for all spammer email harvesting spiders to crawl and find? Or is it not your email address but an enimies that you are trying to get added to a spammers mail list?

I think to avoid the comment NAME field being abused for malicious purposes that they should script the name field so it blocks the use of the "@" character and either refuses the entry of an email address as a NAME or mangles it by converting a "@" into say an "_" or "_@_" to make it not a vailid email address.

Back to your questions generally speaking lifetime license HERE means it will continue to operate with current licensed features indefinatly but as with standard giveaway terms there is NO automatic entitlement to free updates or upgrades to future version releases or re-installation rights after the giveaway duration slot. Installing those future updates or upgrades will NORMALLY invalidate the giveaway license.

BobbyA, Funny you should mention that! I have been meaning to UNinstall the Start Menu utility offered here about three weeks ago (Start Menu 8 Pro) -- because almost every bloody day, up pops an ad offering to upgrade FREE -- when what will change is that suddenly you start getting ADS -- other ads than just that one.

I consider that a dirty trick for a GOTD, and as soon as I have a moment, I will uninstall the original. There are several other free Start Menu utilities, many of them free. Like Start Menu X -- which I just installed OVER the Start Menu 8 -- and I hope I see that back of that.

I mean, the sheer "noive" of it!

Tranmontane, I see that THIS programme is immediately offering an update....

Does that then invalidate this version? Is THAT the idea?

We're always told not to allow updates to GOTD programmes, sometimes weeks or months later, as it will knock you right back to square one with the original.

Anyone know if this is a legit offer today -- or should we follow the usual advice??

Tranmontane, As others have mentioned the WinU update that came right after install did not break it.
Note: After killing the hung update install (via task mgr), rerunning it allowed the update to run again properly.

Tranmontane, Thankfully todays giveaway is a bare installer, no wrapper and is in fact the same installer that the vendor offered from its website when this version was current. So even if the update invalidated the license it would have been no big issue to uninstall the updated version and re-install the giveaway... which is why I accepted the update without a second thought. But the minor update continued to used the saved license information entered in the giveaway build. SO for today with THIS giveaway the minor update currently offered is included in this giveaways license conditions. It will be a matter of personal risk taking if one wants to try installing any future update of this and chance that if the license does get invalidated that you'll be able to re-install 15.22 from the saved installer and the license be re-instated.

Tranmontane, this one may be an exception but in general, the majority of GA's offered here are made so that the license will only work for the version that is offered, not a newer or different one. What happens then is simply the license being invalidated or unrecognized. But there are some GA's that allow for minor updates in a certain amount of time until that period expires and then you either have to stick with the latest version the period granted or use the free one or if it completely expires, uninstall. Not the case this time, you can update to the newer version just fine without worrying. Also, this time it's the same license key like the one for v15.00 given away in July last year here on GOTD, so you get the idea. ;)

Alan,
I would say Revo Uninstaller Pro is better than the built in uninstaller for so many reasons beside that agree on everything else.

Alan, Well said, I agree all the way, with a couple of clarifications (not disagreements):
Defragging is done automatically in modern Windows (also disc checking) and no manual intervention is necessary.
Third party uninstallers will do a better job. This is not the fault of Windows, but of the program developers that provide incomplete uninstallers.
There are also free cleaners, like CCleaner, that supplement the one built in. But cleaning alone will only create some temporary space, not speed up the computer.

And yes, leave the registry (and services, and drivers) alone.

Alan,
Domain look up for their site ylcomputing.com which redirects to pcclean.io

Registrant Name: WU YANLIN
Registrant Organization: WU YANLIN
Registrant Street: HAN LIN MING YUAN 6 DONG 705
Registrant City: SUI NING
Registrant State/Province: SI CHUAN
Registrant Postal Code: 629000
Registrant Country: CN

tomcat, While it is true that modern windows schedule automatic defragmenting and generally speaking the NTFS file system is self correcting in event of app crash or windows crash mid activity but windows built in defragmenting is VERY basic and simplistic in operation. It does not inteligently move infrequently used files or unimportant non-time critical files to the slow end of magnetic media and does not always place loading time critical files at the faster first 10% of the magnetic media drive surface that is not only a faster bit rate but also requires less track steps per megabyte than at regions further in the surface.

Also technically if temporary or junk files are consuming part of the faster 10% of the magnetic drive surface then removing those temporary or junk files so that faster portion of the drives surface is available for other activities within windows or application *CAN* produce a measurable increase in operational speed of any given system. Since windows defragmenter will try and move fragmented files from slower portions of the drive into the faster portion of the drive If free space is available there.

TK, Am in the process of testing the defragmenting and drive optimisation function of this program on one of my vista laptops drives whose partition is 1.1TB and while it has moved alot of idle or not recently accessed files away from the start of the drive it has moved masses of unfragmented rarely used files that were placed at the end of the drive to the middle of the platter which is NOT desirable or in anyway optimal positioning for me... and it is taking AGES because it is shunting around half a terabyte of files to fit its sub-optimal idea of an optimsed layout! I don't think it would be wise for me to let this try and "optimise" the positions of any of my system drives as it is not going to speed anything used regularly up. I'll stick with hand optimising with defraggler moving archives like these installers to the end of the drive and letting windows scheduled defrager handle optimising the windows system files.

Ray Eason, Same with me. I install this utility every time it is offered as a giveaway and every time it re-registers me with a lifetime license automatically. I run this utility every day a 4 a.m. and it keeps my computer running smoothly. (And it's an old desktop computer.) Thank you Win for offering this as a giveaway every year or so.

Ray Eason, if the license is lifetime and update is a simple process, so what is the reason for installing it again?

Wald, because the operating system is continually changing, and so the goal of "clean" and "optimal" also keeps changing?

I'm being asked the same thing!

Mark Campbell,
I did the update and after a reboot it reports "licensed to Giveawayoftheday - Lifetime license"
So all looks good.

Fritz, Thanks

fares, huehuehue. I guess there is barely anyone taking your word for it. The only thing that dramatically speeds up anything is buying a new computer with better hardware. Otherwise we would still run on Pentium I with 256 MB RAM and a copy of WinUtilities, which would cost 5000$ per PC.

fares, By dramatically, do you mean your PC boots up in 1:58 minutes instead of 2:00 minutes.

I guess everyone is an expert :) A PC that's clogged up can certainly do with a good spring clean, and it will certainly speed it up if it was pretty badly gummed up in the first place. Extremely low Disk Space can cause dramatic slowdowns and freezes. Severe Fragmentation can also have an impact. A Disk Clean and thorough Defrag will certainly help. Utilities like this do have a place.

fares, Unless you're an expert, just be very careful with miraculous applets like this one. If you really want to speed up your computer, first take a look at your hardware. At least add more and faster RAM and replace your HDD by an SSD. Just be sure that you get an state-of-the-art SSD. Search and read a lot before deciding which brand and model.

fares, Only way to speed up a PC dramatically is to replace a single core MB with 4,6,7 or 8 cores and a minimum of 16GB dual channel memory and a large SSD drive.

Jylius, err to do all that would also involve changing the motherboard and operating system to support those technologies too... so practically you mean BUY a new computer?

Hadrianus, if you'd need that specified then lets make it accurate, with a Fast SSD and all the performance spec you want to squeeze into your computer as you can buy new laptops with sloooooow 32G or 64G SSD's and 2G RAM on a 64bit WIndows 10 operating system with a slow Intel Atom processor that struggles to single task and cannot be upgraded in any meaningful way. I thought all that was a given and didn't need saying but guess I was wrong huh?