I have used Norton System Suite and McAfee. Norton is a notorious "system killer". Just turn on "crash guard" and watch it crash your system! McAfee... well it's plain garbage! A few years back I was watching a PC Magazine episode on The Screensavers on TechTV (ZDTV at that time) and they were talking about system suite software tests they did. The results of the test... Ontrack got an "A", the next closest competitor, Norton, got a "C". Based on this as well as my extreme disappointment with Norton and McAfee, I purchased Ontrack System Suite 2000 directly from Ontrack's site. What can I say, the software was incredible. Right from the get go after you install and update the software, run FixWizard and you will see just how dorked up Microsoft is and just how good Ontrack is! My brother ran Ontrack on a fresh Windows ME installation to find 114 broken registry links! I had him install it on his system because he was having extreme difficulty with ME crashing and burning. Prior to installing it I had him put in his "recovery disk" and choose the reformat/reinstall option... 114 broken links on a fresh install! Ontrack fixed all of the broken links and cleaned his temp files and folders. His system has been running like a champ ever since! I upgraded to System Suite 3.0 which includes Power Desk 4.0. One of the new utilities that comes with System Suite 3.0 is a program called DataEraser. This program does a complete erase of your hard drive... and I do mean "complete"! If you want to do an "Ollie North" to your hard drive, this program will do it! I am using it on a Windows 2000 professional system with know problems. There is literally tons of things that Ontrack will do to optimize your system including defrag (both drives and registry), clean, fix, monitor, etc. 56 different options in all! I highly recommend this software!

UPDATE:

This software suite is very easy and intuitive to use. Installation includes adding a quick start to your start menu and the usual shortcut on your desktop and folder in your programs folder of your start menu that includes all of the separate tasks that can be performed. The interface itself has a row of generalized selections on the left side that when selected give you all of the options under the specified selection. It is very menu driven which adds to the ease of use. For novice computer users (as well as experts) their is a FixWizard option. This option basically runs the whole gamut (or as much of it as you specify) of programs making the task of optimizing your computer very simple to do. It does include a scheduler which allows you to schedule any of the "safe" options (more on that later) to occur at any given time of any day on a given time frame (day, week, month, etc.). If that is your choosing, it can very much be a "set it and forget it" program. This program will let you do some "expert" level things to your computer, namely, your registry. The nice thing is when you venture into things that are "expert only" you get a warning that proceeding may leave your computer a lifeless pile of goo. Anytime you select a program that shouldn't be run without first disabling your virus scanner or shouldn't be run until you confirm the integrity of your harddrive, it lets you know. One of the other options in 3.0 is WinCustomizer (gone in 4.0... why?). This allows you to customize some of the things in Windows that Microsoft would probably rather you not touched. You can get rid of the "Shortcut to" on names of all of your desktop icons. You can also get rid of or change the little arrow that identifies the icon as a shortcut. You are also able to add or remove icons from your desktop, start menu, or control panel(?). So, in short, you get a scheduler, drive tools (disk defrag, disk verifier, disk fixer, size manager, etc.), registry tools (registry fixer, registry defrag, registry editor), fully customizible anti-virus software (Trend-Micro), uninstall/install agent, clean-up tools (cache, history, registry, cookies, plug-ins, active x, etc.), a complete zip agent (very cool! you can even create self extracting zip files), a complete recovery agent to include DiskSnapshot. If I haven't covered everything... sorry, my bad! I really cannot express enough just how good this product is! The new 4.0 version includes a NetDefence firewall and a new "XP"ish interface... and gets rid of WinCustomizer...Whhhhhyyyyy!!!!! I know this is a review of 3.0, but I thought I'd add a few comments on 4.0. I was reluctant to install and use NetDefense because I am a very happy ZoneAlarm user. Well, I finally decided to at least give it a shot since I bought it (at worst I could uninstall it and reinstall ZoneAlarm). Well, to my surprise, it is an excellent firewall! It protects incoming and outgoing traffic and is as easy and simple to use as ZoneAlarm... one pro, and one con though... the pro is that if you are setting this up on a computer for someone that might be a little frightened by seeing all of the people pinging their computer, it operates VERY stealthily. The only way you will ever know that you have been pinged is be viewing the traffic log. No icon changing or pop up windows like ZoneAlarm (I know you can make ZoneAlarm not warn you when it has protected you but with NetDefense there is nothing to turn off). The con is that there is no way (that I have found) of clearing the SecurityLog like there is in ZoneAlarm. All and all, the upgrade to 4.0 was a very good one... but I hope that Ontrack reconsiders and brings back WinCustomizer.

On the safe mode bit... anything that could be detrimental to your computer SystemSuite first warns you and then requires that you select the things you want done that could pose a problem. For example, when cleaning your registry SystemSuite will mark all bad items (or possible bad items) with a windows registry icon colored white, yellow or brown. The white ones are items that SystemSuite knows are safe to remove, the yellow ones it thinks are safe but can't be sure, the brown ones are items it doesn't have a clue about. The white ones are prechecked for removal. The other "you" have to check prior to SystemSuite removing them (WARNING: DO NOT DO THIS UNLESS YOU 100% KNOW ITS SAFE!). When I had SystemSuite 2000 I did this, hense the "lifeless pile of goo" comment! Unless you "enjoy" reformatting and reinstalling, head my warning! Anyhow, for this reason, when you run FixWizard it only does what is safe to do... no input from the user required.

Recommended: Yes