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Editor's Note: PC World has received a number of complaints and problem reports about this product. None of the problems reported to us were found during the testing of this software by the author, who tested it extensively on a PC with Windows XP, Service Pack 1.

Once the maker of one of the best PC cleaning and optimization tools on the market, Iolo Technologies had slipped a bit in recent years, turning out mediocre versions of its flagship System Mechanic software. I'm happy to see that the $50 System Mechanic 6 Is substantially better than the two prior versions.

System Mechanic's original appeal was its promise to make your system run quicker and leaner, with simple, easy-to-use tools. This version answers that promise with an informative interface. Most striking about the shipping version I tested are the colorful audio-volume-style meters that display your computer's overall health and security status at a glance. I also appreciated the app's logical layout, which should provide novices with fast access to the most important tools for cleaning out junk files, optimizing the Registry, speeding Windows' startup, repairing hard-drive problems, and killing spyware. Drilling down to the more expert tools is intuitive, though most people will probably never get around to them. The basic tools are that good.

Below the meters is a box with six items detailing where your machine is in good, or bad, shape. The first four--Clutter, Speed, Safety, and Fitness--tell you which major repair tools you should run to optimize your system. The two other items are for maintenance: Update indicates whether System Mechanic is fully updated, while Active Care lets you know whether an automated maintenance schedule has been set up.

You can run repair tools directly from within this box or use the Power Tools buttons on the right side of the application's interface.

The first of these buttons is the all-in-one PC TotalCare tool. This is a good place to start if your machine has a lot of problems, because the tool runs all the most important repair and optimization applications with a single mouse click. But it is slow, slow, slow. So I jumped immediately to the PC Cleanup tool, which quickly found--and eliminated--a gigabyte's worth of Windows temporary files, cookies, and cached Web pages.

The PC Accelerator tool is my favorite part of System Mechanic 6. This tool optimizes your Internet connection settings, removes any unnecessary programs that crank up when Windows starts, defragments your hard drives and system memory, and compacts the Windows Registry. I used the last major tool, PC Repair, to fix broken shortcuts and to delete spyware apps and invalid uninstallers. After I used the tool, System Mechanic declared my PC in tip-top shape, but shortly thereafter a system-tray icon reported that my machine's health and performance could stand improvement. However, when I restarted System Mechanic, it found no problems to fix.

Beyond this modest issue, I didn't run into any problems, which leads me to recommend System Mechanic 6 as a fine addition to any PC optimization arsenal.

Ramon G. McLeod

System Mechanic 6

Iolo Technologies

PC cleaning and optimization software shapes up your system at a reasonable price.
List price when reviewed: $50
Current prices (if available)