Well Zone Alarm said this is not a good program....
File: C:\Program Files\XTweak\isxdl.dll-Win32.Backdoor.Graybird

This was the first program I have downloaded and I didn't realize it showed you the registration info before installing. Well I didn't write it down or anything. Is there any way to get it now?

If there is anyone who likes this program they must not have allowed it to defrag any harddrives. It took 45 hours to defrag a 40 Gig partition a low speed record as far as I can remember!

I really like this program! I think its the best tweak program here yet.
I played around with it for a couple hours and it will stay installed. For any that missed out on the free giveaway, hope it comes back..Its Great!!

very good work well,only thing not so good is the help? no help on web to so how you know the best seting, I keep it as it is very good now can take off 3 free Tweaker off as this one will do the job.

@ Kyle XY #110:
I saw your question in my RRS-feed and though I said everything I think I had to say I cannot go without leaving a sound advice.

Do not uninstall your Tune Up Utillity now !!!! This a very good tool indeed!

Though many things have been said about XTweak, the only one that can give you the uttermost best advice are you yourself. The comments can focus your attention on issues you would like to be sure about.

Commenting is one thing, many people comment just from their feeling, others like to test. But one day is a short period to get a feeling about a tool (with many options) for yourself.

Though in my former comments it looks like I am promoting XTweak, this is not the case. I only want to show why it is not a bad tool (even when it is a bit against the wind). There were just to many claims that didn't proof that at all. You decide, I do promote selfdeciding and thinking.
But the comments are very usefull because many sound advice is geven aswell. That is very diffent from an advise uninstalling any tools that you might have, use or like. I never said XTweak is the best. I just don't think is not a good tool, like others claim it to be. I like to promote good argumentation aswell.

Please make up your own mind, take the time and be very carefull, because you can screw up your pc beyond the famous point of no return !! And XTweak is a bit aggressive. There are tools much more friendly (I'm sure you could ruin your pc with Tune Up Utillity with the wrong settings).

I don't agree that beginners should not try this, beginners will eventually be skilled afterall provided they try and learn. Falling while making the first steps is part of the learning process. Just not trying to fall by making no steps at all will never turn you into a walker. I made so many mistakes in my life and I never was sorry for it because I could always learn something from it. Ofcourse at that very moment I was sometimes completely horrified and depaired. And ofcourse you can feel sorry for other people too when they are involved and had to suffer the consequences.

Just play with it using something as Returnil (free version is good enough) in protection mode. In time you will learn which proposals the tool makes are good to accept and what is not. Test things while being sure you can recover. You do learn and you do recover !! So beginners can try this but must be carefull. When your not sure, then don't risk it. I didn't say every beginner should try this, only when you feel like exploring, feel comfortable and take precausions.

And there is one other thing, using 2 tools for the same thing in tweaking is a horrorstory on its own. It is better to decide this functionallity from this tool and that functionallity from that tool (there goes the all in one approach. Only when all functionallity is what you want it to be, all in one is OK. Sometimes it is better to have some specialized tools that do what you want). It might eventually result in choosing for one tool.

Though the giveaway for this GAotD is already closed, I hope you have installed XTweak and didn't uninstall Tune Up Utillity. I also hope this advise will still reach you. In Europe I just wake up from a good sleep so I could not comment any earlier.

Have fun (exploring always is) and take care.

Thanks to #108 for pointing to Revo Uninstaller, a nice piece of freeware. On my own I would probably never have found it in the myriads of programs out there.

Apart from the occcasional unique and exceptional offer one of the benefits of GATD is the useful comments.

I like this one. A couple of the features I may not try because I'm not so sure I can tolerate the results if it does something too high tech and then goes a muck. Perhaps caution is the best approach with tools like this.

I happy this one was offered and I now have it installed.

I have downloaded this.I also have tune up utility.Will anyone please help me figure out which one to keep out of these two?(so as to save some space)
Thanks in advance.
Kyle XY

Changed my windows xp theme to classic, but solved it. Did not feel any improvement in performance. Program Needs improvement

I've changed my mind from my earlier post (#19), and I've uninstalled the program using Revo Uninstaller (free and excellent). There are just too many people saying how aggressive this program is to ignore. I like "tweak" software, but I don't want to take any chances.

As has been said by other posters, there are lots of free programs that do a respectible job and have proven over time that they're SAFE to use. After all the posts here about safety concerns I don't want to take chances now. BTW, uninstalled fine using REVO, and REVO even found all the registry entries from this program so they could be safely uninstalled. Sorry GAOTD - thanks anyway.

This a poor software product.
TweakUi and FreshUI are much better system tweakers (and free).
The mother of them All is RegToy. It's like TweakUI on steroids and then some.
You can read more or download (free) at Lifehacker:

http://lifehacker.com/5006718/regtoy-tweaks-your-pc-every-which-way

As far as the defrag and clean disk/file capabilities - stay away. This is a bad product.
It is also a BS product also, because of Bogus results. Bogus indicators.

I am not very impressed, same tweaks as in all other fantastic tweak programs that change a lot in the registry and you end up with a total messed up windows. Honestly, if you want a faster machine, buy a new one instead of messing it up this way.

crashing with some unknown exception everytime gets a 0 from me and an uninstall..

I downloaded and ran the free version of DTweak on my Vista Ultimate system. As has been mentioned, it is a very aggressive cleaner. Looks like I get to reinstall my OS and programs since I now can't run DTweak to restore my Registry or run System Restore. DTweak fails with a missing class error and system restore fails with a shadow copy service error. I would be upset but I should have known better so the fault is really mine.

You get what you pay for!

For an extensive list of do it yourself tweaks for XP, see TweakXP.com.

On Win XP Pro 2002 SP2 it seems to run fine.

The registry cleaner seems to work fine.

On Win XP Pro x64 Edition 2002 SP2 I get a system exception error when trying to create a restore point. This is, perhaps, a object locking conflict, as Windows reports that "the object is currently in use elsewhere." In and of itself, this is not a problem, but the fact that the exception error is not handled is,, in my opinion, a bad thing, and shows a lack of finishing on the developer's par.

In comparison to TweakUI, it offers several features such as Hard drive monitor, registry cleaning and defragmentation and a disk defragmenter which TweakUI doesn't have, and the interface is easer to use.

I think the biggest failing in this program is the lack of documentation, especially explanatory text explaining exactly what happens when you perform an operation, and defining things like what "valid Yes/No" means in the startup editor.

In general, this sort of thing is a common failure, not just in the software field, but in ALL product development. It is well known that the last 10% of development takes as long and costs as much as the first 90%. Since the first 90% usually results in "mostly functional" product, the natural tendency is to rush it out the door to make money. Unfortunately, the last 10% is what makes the product "professional." Handling ALL errors and exceptions. Providing detailed documentation usable by even novice users. In a program such as this, which permits the user to make major changes in fragile parts of the OS, an particularly one that states that it is "easy for beginners," it is VITAL, that documentation and error handling are as near-perfect as possible. It's just too easy with such tools to cause major problems on your system.

The concept of "finishing" things is what is known as "craftsmenship" and is one of the things that gives both the creator and the user satisfaction and pride in the result. It also, incidentally, decreases support calls, increases customer satisfaction, and improves reviews, and thus sales.

Does this mean you should wait until that last 10% is done before release?

No. But such releases are, in fact, beta releases, and should be sold with an update to the full product as part of the price. They should also be sold at a steep discount. This reduces your expenses by increasing the test user base, generates an income stream, provides word-of-mouth advertising and prevents reviewers from being too hard on the product, as they are aware that it is not the "final" version.

The purpose of the first release is not to make back your development costs as rapidly as possible, but to "polish" the product and tweak it based upon actual user responses. Yes, it needs to generate income, a company without income is not going to stay around long, but you should expect to pay the development costs over the course of the "final" release (1.0) lifetime at best.

Many utility software items on systems of all sizes, were written initially to solve a particular problem that the programmer faced. Usually, these have extremely rough interfaces. This is in part because the initial program has few users, all of whom understand the program. Too many programmers stop at this point, thinking that it will only be used a few times, and then discarded.

In fact, software has an extremely long lifetime, in doing many system conversions on mainframes, many custom utilities end up being part of the final system, and even those which (like database conversion programs) are only used during a conversion, will be used many, many times during the process, so it is worth spending some time to write them fully. And they will be useful for the next conversion, if only as a template.

Finish the work before selling it as a finished product!

As it sits, this product is functional, and for free is quite good. But if I were to pay $27 for it, I would expect an improved version within a year with a free upgrade.

Tried it and wasn't impressed. Registry scanner found and "cleaned" 631 items. Closed scanner and reopened it. It then found 615 errors. Didn't it clean them the first time? Also, the disk defrag kicked my CPU Utilization over 90% At least it was free.

Don't trust this yet!!!!

It reported hundreds of wrong files types and extensions, applications and invalid paths, add/remove program entries, etc that my perfectly good Registry fixing program Registry Mechanic said "DIDN'T EXIST".

What's Going On Here!?!?!

Just a word of caution

If you are using any type of encryption program for files. Make sure that you have a back up of these files as this program will destroy them. Luckily I had a back-up of everything.

. . . .My first comment to GAOTD . . .
This is a great gift! Here are my first impressions:
I didn't see anything in it that is really new, but the author has done a great job of putting a bunch of utilities together in one convenient place that is easy to navigate. I think it is well
worth downloading and evaluating.

Pros:
1. It has more tweaks than any other tweaking program I have seen.
2. The tweaks are categorized fairly well. There are so many tweaks it's probably difficult to categorize them better.
3. You can examine each suggested tweak, and either accept or reject it.

Warning:
1. With this program or with any other tweaking program, always back up the registry AND make a restore point first.
2. If you are not familiar or don't understand a suggested tweak, don't enable the tweak! (Also, see Red vs Green below for a comment.)

Cons:
1. The color scheme in the title bar makes it hard to read.
Why not use black text and icons?
2. There is no Help feature that I could find.

I would like to see:
1. A help icon for each tweak, or a Windows style overall Help file. Example of why it's needed: On "Detect Black Hole Routers" - I don't know what a "Black Hole router" is! Of course, I can always Google it - but this is just one item, and there is a lot of stuff here I don't know about . . . . It would be nice if it were made easy for me to find out . . . .
2. A Maximize button - or at least the ability to resize the window.
3. The ability to use larger fonts (some of us are visually impaired).
4. On each window, an explanation of how to enable or reject the options (or tweaks or features) shown on that page. For example, on some windows, "A green icon indicates that the indicated item will be scanned. To not scan this item, click on the icon and change it to red". On other windows, "A red icon indicates the indicated feature is disabled. To enable the feature, click on the icon and change it to green". ETC. (I think that's the color scheme -- I might be wrong. )

Note: Not all of the selections are tweaks. Some features are just a quick way of getting system information, but are nice to have so that you can access the various details quickly from one location. (Examples: Operating System, CPU Type).

Overall, as I said, this is a great gift! I suspect I will be using it often. Thanks to everyone involved.!

P.S. Why bother to mention spelling and grammar errors? Many of these programs GAOTD offers are written by people in other countries. Is your spelling and grammar in any language other than English perfect? Is it even perfect in English? I was born in, and live in, the States, and I have problems with spelling and grammar, too!
Respectfully submitted,
HiPockets

The program took over 5 minutes to load on my computer... I checked it out and found that Tweak Now Power Pack does the same thing only faster !!!! I'll be removing your DL as soon as I'm finished here. Thank You !!!!

Great little program.
Installed without any problems on windows XP Pro sp2.
One of the things I like is the HDD monitor tools. I have been having problems and this tool helped me find the issue. It very easy to use with a simple interface. I have not tried everything yet but I recommend this program.

JUST TO REPEAT THE WARNING

Don't just click Clean on what it found. It will find more reg "errors" than Ccleaner or TuneUp Utilities because those AREN'T ERRORS! I checked the detailed results. There are many places in the registry where you'll find some file associations to "missing" programs but those are stubs for future usage, to aid in MIME types, and as stubs of known file types where the application for them are not yet installed (for proper functioning of Explorer.exe).

Doesn't matter whether you like the interface or not, or whether you think the system restore will work. Unlike ccleaner and other more well-acclaimed tools, THIS WILL WRECK YOUR PC if you scan and just accept all it suggests! This software is not just "aggressive", it's negligent. Just look at how they could list the wrong entries for cleaning add/remove? They are not even in the correct registry hive!

To the developers, please really really really put more QC on this. This is not a text editor, this is a system tweaker! More damage can be done in one click so please be responsible!

If you still want to give it a chance, wait until the developers put A LOT MORE WORK into it. I am putting warnings over and over again because releasing this to the public is gross negligence. Don't risk it and lose all your precious GAOTDs.

If you do not know what you are doing, this program will break your system (with your help)

If you know what you are doing, this program could still break your system due to it's highly aggressive nature and lack of checks. Running it on my test box I found it to make what I would term as indiscrimate choices. I broke the test box in 1 scan. (xp-sp3 running on toshiba 1.6Ghz laptop w/ 1Gb RAM) and since it deleted my last good backup, I'll be rebuilding that machine this afternoon. . .

This one is dangerous folks.

#66 Funkster

I am on Windows XP SP3. I think what you said is true, the add/remove problem is probably due to the sandbox (I use Altiris but it's the same principle with sandboxie). But I never had any problems with all other software. Since the Altiris layer was active, the add/remove entry should have been ok. I didn't have to uninstall too since I can just delete the Altiris layer but I just wanted to test it :). So guys, get some protection before testing: sandboxie or Altiris SVS (free). And just in case, have Returnil or MS SteadyState on.

Pass. As many other's have mentioned, the web site of the author is very poor. Spelling is bad, no info on what the "tweaks" are. When they have a broken image for "paypal", it shows they don't even check their site, what does that mean for their programs?

Free is free, but some things aren't a good value even if they are free IMO.

@Bettersafethansorry #82:
Suppose there are 3 files A, B and C. All 3 are fragmented A1, A2, A3 and B1 etc.
Suppose they are arranged on your disk as C2A1A3B3B2A2C1C3B1. After defragmenting you would like to gave A1A2A3C1C2C3B1B2B3 or B1B2B3A1A2A3C1C2C3 or whatever combination that keeps the A, B and C fragment together.
Imagine your disk with say like a 1000 files. Many arrangements would be valid as defragmented.
I know this concept is a bit simplified but it will do in this argumentation. I dare you to take any two different defragmenters (not just reskinned as in de many DVD-copiers) that make the same arrangement. They simply do not!! This is due to the fact that their sorting algoritms differ. As soon you are goiig to try a new defrag-tool is goig to do a lot of rearranging the first time you use is.
That is perfectly normal behaviour. Now this is not the way you want it because you want it the way JKDefrag does. It is simple fro defragging use JKDefrag and not XTweak. But this not show XTWeak is not any good !!
The same when using a different regcleaner: you will find things you did not before. But I do agree this regcleaner is quite agressive, but not in a way it cannot be managed. This indeed is depending on the user.
Nothing wrong with this app. though it is a bit deviant in GUI (which i like)and in processing.

Good software, I like it but takes 5secs to load

@ #5 Bix, #18 John, #48 Tony - This web site has "FORUMS" and I know how to use them. Do You?

I don't know if I trust something from a site that can't even spell correctly! How can you create software when you can't spell?? Look at the link from post #1, and see all the spelling errors. A child can spell better than that!!

Actually not only did it stop working but now I can no longer run the Windows install manager. I wouldn't recommend installing this, unless you want to spend your time restoring your computer to a previous Windows restore point after it stuffs up your computer.

Rubbish. It worked once, I cleaned the registry and then kept crashing.

Not bad, thanks GAOTD.

Needs a complete overhaul. Doesn't see anything other then itself. Doesn't recognize prior system restore points, prior registry cleaning or defrag by another program.
Hooks itself deep into the Windows shell, to deep for me. Aggressive and as dangerous as any can get. Ugly as sin! Thank God for Returnil that was given away here some time ago.
Install, dabble at the risk of unrepairable damage! No different then what DTweak does to Vista. Bad business Daoisoft. Very, very bad indeed.
Go for it! Then get on your knees and pray, pray very hard!

As #64 says: not finding a restore point which had just been created should have been a warning enough but just for a trial I then ran the registry cleaner function and it supposedly detected over 100 items - items not found by CCleaner/Registry Mechanic/RegSeeker or RegScrubXP.
Next the defragmenter function managed to completely re-arrange the disk data in a completely different way from the way that my much preferred defrag program (JKDefrag) does it.
By now I had seen enough and not even trusting an uninstallation I ran last nights Acronis image restore to remove any evidence of its existence on my system.

Today's GOTD offering represents well the way this website can work to the advantage of all.

Daoisoft is a company that I am completely ignorant of company, software offerings, and reputation.

Daoisoft is offering a very new release of its flagship (apparently)program for our use and evaluation.

The program (XTweak) offered works as advertised, has a pleasing and functional interface, and it provides "tweaks" not usually found in tweaking utilities.

If the program continues to work well for me I plan to purchase it. I am pleased to see GOTD rally forward with today's offering.

IMO, it's better to use a specialized registry cleaner for the task rather than an all-in-one tweak tool such as this.

These types of programs can be really helpful, if you know what you are doing.

But, if you don't know what you are doing, you can damage your system beyond repair.

To be safe, you should create a restore point before any tweaking.

Also, it's not Vista compatible...

Thanks anyway, GOTD team. As always, you are appreciated.

no thanx!!!

first- the description here and on their website tells nothing of the actual tweaks that this does... like when it says "graphical tweaks"... well what kind?

second- i have had problems with registry defragmenting programs... things disapeering.

I think any tweaks should be learned in programmers forums. 1 tweak at a time, so the user can try and repair if needed. Anything where i press a button and it makes global changes is not for me again!

be careful

XTweak help file

The "help" is there but ALL the images are even numbered (thatis, image002, image004, etc) in the HTML. The images supplied are odd numbered (that is, image001, image003, etc). AND the company asks you to buy the FULL version.

GOTD - Thank you, it's nice but looks like it's crippled.

This is one of those utility programs you look at, tip your head to the side, and say to yourself, "Ummm I don't know?" PC’ers can easily get lulled into a false sense of empowerment, that rush of "Wow I can get my PC to work even better, faster!" The horror experienced the last time they bit off more than they can chew is all too easily forgotten. I'll stay on the side of prudence, as I read a label I superglued just above the keyboard on my notebook after the last time I bit off more than I could chew. "If It Ain't Broke, DON'T Fix It!!!” (Besides I like my software library the way it is, with all my GAOTD's intact)

Addendum: In the help file, which reads more like a features presentation, under Optimization for memory and cache it says, “Memory and Cache is intended for power users who know what they are doing.” That is one of the oldest marketing ploys in the book. What’s one of the best ways to get someone to try something? By cautioning someone not to try it. The real danger with that comes afterwards when that fledgling PC user thinks “Hey look at me! I'm doing power user stuff! Well all right!” Well all wrong because chances are pretty good that after that experience they will end up “Biting off more than they can chew” doing something else. True power users have their systems already max tweaked long before this utility had come along.

I personally liked the interface of this program. I didn't find it difficult to navigate and it was nice to look at. The list of tweaks I saw here were largely available in TweakUI, FreshUI, or in my case I set most of them when I built an nLited Windows install. Because of this, I felt the program wasn't terribly useful for me personally, but certainly not a bad product. On the contrary, it's simply a good product in a saturated market.

Joey

@fikel #68:
See link:http://www.daoisoft.com/ -- XTWEAK PRO section (bottom) states:
"XTweak has approximately the same tweaks and tools as DTweak, but because of some essential differences between Windows XP and Windows Vista we released XTweak and DTweak as different products"
Depending on your OS you can choose the product that is tuned to your OS for better results.

...but good program

@69 - its free today :) stop complaining

shame it wasn't dtweak pro
doesn't matter thanks anyway

Same as #14

Another test program that needs a lot more fixing. This program can and probably wi8ll damage your system.

Funny! Most of the Tweaks it offer are already available defaultly in Windows!
Disk cleaner, Defragmenter, Autorun Manager(Type "msconfig" in run command of xp),
Startup,
And for Cache, Right click Mycomputer>Goto Properties>Advanced>Performance>Settings>and Goto Advanced tab in Performance options. Under Virtual memory, press Change Button.
you can use 4Gb allocation for OS installed Disc
You can find Visual effects manager, Data Execution Prevention also!
For Virtual Drive, microsoft.com offers free Virtual drive creator(virtual PC i think..)
Free Tweak UI from microsoft is small in size but very powerful!
For Hard drive monitoring, a free & very very powerful utility called PC WIZARD 2008, from www.cpuid.com is available!DONT MISS THIS!
Hard Drive temperature monitor free(Really Nice!) -available @ www.rsdsoft.com

A lot of useful softs are available for free!
My opinion: Windows itself offers many Utilities. We can practise using it!
Its waste for buying this for nearly 30$!
Many FREE useful, powerful softs are available now! Just use them & support their Creators!

This program already works with Vista, so what reason is there to buy D-tweak? Look at Sys Reqs