Uniblue PowerSuite 2009
Once again I get to review one of those all in one system repair tools and put my good running system at jeopardy and once again I have to reinstall Windows Vista.
Ease of Use, Performance: 5/25
Look & Feel: 20/25
Features 5/25
How much I enjoy 0/25
Total: 30/100
Uniblue PowerSuite 2009 is a three piece set of computer system tools that is supposed to get your computer into shape and keep it running well. I had no end of problems with this program and refuse to run it on my only other good system as I do not want to spend more time with it.
I received the program as a download and installed it; the program comes as three separate Uniblue programs in one download for a system maintenance package. Uniblue RegistryBooster, SpeedUpMyPC and Driver Scanner make for a good sounding set of maintenance tools but you may want to think again.
While some people have not had any problems I have read where too many have and this concerns me for a program that is supposed to get your system running better. I also had problems from the start with the program as it did not seem to do much for speeding up my system but it did find plenty of problems in the registry.
Installation takes a few minutes and you will have to restart your computer which is normal for programs that change so many essential files of your computer. Once installed it runs through a system scan and baseline test to start your computer cleaning and getting things into shape.
The main window that opens after a system scan has three buttons to click for the three sections: RegistryBooster, SpeedUpMyPC and Driver Scanner. All three sections said I needed updates and more work so I started with the RegistryBooster and cleaned out several junk registry entries.
I scanned the registry and compared the found errors with entries that other scanners, CCleaner and WinASO Registry Optimizer, found and they matched pretty well. I cleaned up using all three and no one program did better than the others except the CCleaner which is not quite up to the WinASO and RegistryBooster’s quality as CCleaner is a free.
Once I had done the registry cleaning and checked out that program I went on to the SpeedUpMyPC and found several options for fixing boot up, internet connection and shut down. I tried these and found no real noticeable difference in boot up or shut down times with the same times generally before and after running the SpeedUpMyPC fixes.
I have already run other fixes from other companies, namely WinASO Registry Optimizer and have run this often so my system is probably optimized already. This may be why I saw no improvement for the internet speed that I checked up and download speeds using Speedtest.net.
I then moved on to Driver Scanner and had problems when the scanner reported I had a few drivers out of date that needed replacing. I checked out the drivers and they seemed appropriate to my system and so I let Driver Scanner install them one at a time.
I always restart my system and make restore points in my system to undo problems before doing things like checking out software as I always want a place to be able to restore to if things go wrong. In this case my restore points meant nothing as somewhere along the line they got erased either by the program or changes the program made to other programs on my computer.
When it came down to trying to restore my computer to a restore point I had created all restore points were erased and I had no choice but to reinstall Windows but that was later. I have a USB notebook dock attached to my system for the handy powered USB hub that allows me to attach USB devices that otherwise may not get enough power from my system.
This dock has a serial connection and the DriverScanner wanted to install a serial driver for this part of the dock which I first let it try and then ignored after it continuously failed to install. I quit trying the serial driver and went to another driver it wanted to install on my system which is USB Audio which I do not even use.
I let Driver Scanner install this and it went thorugh just fine installing the USB Audio drivers and I thought all was well with this program. I went to the next driver it wanted to install, an Asix USB to Fast Ethernet Adapter which is the dock again which I promptly tested the ignore feature which really hid the program driver from view.
The last driver that the Uniblue Driver Scanner wanted to install is for my Hewlett Packard All In One Printer Scanner Fax machine which was a big mistake to let the program touch. I ran the install and started getting errors during install and then was receiving system errors and my computer would freeze or crash.
I went to the handy Backup section of the Driver Scanner and tried to reinstall the previous driver as well as restore which did nothing. I could not get the restore of the driver scanner to do anything and was starting to have real problems with keeping my system running long enough to do anything with.
I started getting blue screen crashes repeatedly and tried starting my system in Safe Mode which did not work, it would crash there and finally after a couple of days of crashes and blue screens I reinstalled Windows. Now I have a good computer and will not install PowerSuite 2009 again, if you want to try the program you may go ahead but I do advise against it.
While some people have had no problems and several reviewers’ state they think the program is good I found others who thought the opposite and this in itself raises a red flag to me. If there are enough people out there that are having problems with a small program that is supposed to speed up your computer and make it work better it may be safer to look elsewhere.
Many people have not had problems with this program but I did and can say I do not like it, but others have also said they had problems as well. I cannot say for sure just what did cause my problems but I do now it all started with the Driver Scanner wanting to update my printer drivers.
I am not sure exactly that the program did the damage or it was a conflicting program that just did not like the PowerSuite program. Running the Driver Scanner and letting the program install what it deemed as a safe driver really trashed my system and had me reinstalling Windows.
I do not recommend Uniblue’s PowerSuite 2009 when there are so many other better and well known programs that do the same thing and do it better and safer.