In my travels through cyberspace, I’ve become increasingly aware of the myriad programs that purport to be the one-stop-shop for all of your computer’s security and upkeep needs. Frequently these programs are expensive, much too expensive sometimes. This being your source for all things free, I’ll be examining one of these suites that happen to cost nary a penny. Let’s take a closer look at Advanced Windows Care 2 Personal.

When you first run AWC, you will be prompted to ‘backup’ using Windows System Restore. It takes just a moment to create a restore point. If something goes awry after that point, you can revert back to the settings that were in place at that time; hopefully removing any issues you had. Next, you’ll see the main program window, with a ‘News Center’ off to the right. This announces new versions and products as well as a handy link to the support forums. You can simply check a box to avoid seeing the News every time… or so I thought. Checking the box is only allowed in the Paid version. It seems awfully stingy to exclude something so insignificant from Free version users, but let’s move on.

The program window is fairly basic, merely displaying information on your computer and network; apparently mine are ‘general’, and your version/last scan date. I noticed my database date was from last year (December 2006), so I updated it with a few clicks. This went smoothly
and quickly and did not even require a program restart. For a lack of knowing what to do next, logic told me to hit ‘Start’ at the bottom of the window. On the next screen, you will see some actually useful system specifications, as well as the choice of scans to run.

AWC contains no less then four scanners; spyware, registry, startup and temporary files, as well as Security Defense (to prevent spyware installation), System Analysis (optimize and repair system configuration, whatever that means) and a Privacy Sweep to clear histories. All seven options are checked by default, so I went ahead and scanned. AWC will work its way down the list, using each tool one at a time and reporting the results along the way. The entire system
scan took a remarkable two minutes, but certainly found plenty of issues for me to explore.

Next to each scan’s results, click on Show Details to see exactly what each problem is. Let’s take a look at each scan individually.

1. Spyware Scan found only one tracking cookie which was considered low risk.
2. Security Defense came up with an incredible 31,548 items from its database from which it could protect my system. If you want to examine the list, you can select things individually, but I chose to go ahead and select all of the items. Categorized as Infection/Website/Cookies, you’ll need to clear each area individually.
3. Registry Scan found 837 invalid and/or unnecessary registry entries on my system. Considering the number of problems I apparently had, there is a humorous tip at the top of this screen: "Do not over clean." Putting faith in my restore point, I cleaned them all.
4. System Analysis found 78 issues that ranged from troubleshooting, Windows interface and Network to Windows Services and System Configuration. The latter area includes options to optimize the file system and CPU/RAM compatibility. To be fair again, I cleared them all.
5. Startup Scan looks at all of the programs that you may or may not have setup to start with Windows. They are categorized as Trustworthy Necessary, Trustworthy User’s Choice or Unknown. You can do further research on your unknowns if something is not recognizable, but
   I happened to know that all of mine were safe. I simply added them to the Trustworthy list.
6. Privacy Sweep is similar to CCleaner: http://www.pcmech.com/article/ccleaner/, but it found only 49Kb of data to remove.
7. Temporary Files found 125MB to remove from the Windows Temp folder and Internet Explorer cache. You can include the recycle bin in this sweep if you forget to empty that on occasion.

Since this was my first run through, I chose to manually examine each of the seven scans. If you’re looking for a quick fix, simply scan and click "Repair" to enact all of the recommended changes at once. While this is convenient, I would recommend trying to take a few moments to
glance through the results to avoid removing anything critical. I did find that a few small script errors popped up after running AWC, which probably came from registry entries that should not have been cleaned. A quick restore and rescan took care of these issues, but it does not bode well for the everyman who might try this program and not know how to fix such problems.

I also wanted to compare AWC to my other system care utilities, so I fired up SpywareBlaster (prevents spyware installation), AdAware SE & Spybot (spyware scanners) and CCleaner (cleans old files). I wanted to see if they would come up with anything after AWC had supposedly thoroughly cleaned my system. CCleaner found 129MB to remove, including cookies and Temp Files that AWC had just scanned. This was a bit disconcerting. On the flip side, Spybot came up empty and AdAware found two cookies. SpywareBlaster managed to only protect from 7600 items, far short of the number AWC claimed.

So to sum up, AWC is a surprisingly solid offering for a one program suite of computer maintenance. The few issues I experienced with errors and CCleaner’s superiority prove that it may not be completely ready for primetime, but may be a worthwhile addition to a maintenance program arsenal. Check it out on: http://www.iobit.com/AdvancedWindowsCarePersonal/index.html