McAfee Utilities 4.0

Most of McAfee Utilities' programs, when installed on a freshly formatted system, keep Windows operating smoothly and free of registry and file-system clutter. For example, Disk Minder, a speedy alternative to Windows Scandisk, is able to repair more problems and scan a hard drive much more quickly than the old Windows standby. Disk Tune is a slow but thorough drive defragmenter that, with the help of a new feature called Active Tune, keeps drives from becoming fragmented in the first place. There are scads of other utilities that vary in usefulness from how-did-you-ever-live-without-it (PGP is an outstanding encryption minisuite) to sheer pointlessness (Crash Protector does little more than present a friendly announcement when an application crashes). All of the included utilities can be controlled through a simple, central interface.

Unfortunately, the suite is plagued by incompatibilities, some of which can be dangerous to data. After we installed McAfee Utilities on Windows 2000 and Me systems that had been in heavy use for over six months, our computers experienced several problems. The former system slowed to a painful crawl, the hard drive churning incessantly through activities that, before McAfee, didn't require any paging. Removing McAfee Utilities remedied this and brought the system back to normal. Things weren't so rosy for the Windows Me system, which, after its hard drive was optimized by McAfee's Disk Tune, exhibited frequent invalid page faults, Explorer crashes and, eventually, a flat-out refusal to boot into Windows. McAfee's inept tech support department offered a few simplistic tips that proved futile and then blamed the problems on Windows, recommending that we contact Microsoft. In the end, the only recourse was to reinstall Windows Me and remove McAfee Utilities.

With its plethora of utilities and its friendly price, McAfee Utilities is an excellent tool for keeping Windows systems running at their peaks. Your mileage, of course, may vary. Based on our experiences, we'd strongly recommend that you install the suite on a relatively clean Windows system rather than one that's been in use for a long time. --Joel Durham Jr.

Amazon.com Review
McAfee Utilities aims to allay fears of losing that all-important data by offering a comprehensive package that not only backs up your data, but also promises to make your system run smoother at the same time. Packed full of goodies, McAfee Utilities follows in the footsteps of the Norton Utilities series, offering disk defraggers, registry cleaners, and hard disk image capturers. In total, the package offers over 20 different products in one box, and, although it doesn't offer the infamous McAfee VirusScan, it does its best to make up for this shortfall.

In addition to the fix programs, the crash protectors, and tuning software, the package also offers a diagnostics program that allows you to see how your system is running. Along with systems control, this new version offers PGP (Pretty Good Privacy), a security software application that enables you and your coworkers to exchange or store information securely, whether it be in e-mails or Word documents.

But be warned: playing within the hallowed bowels of your computer's registry and system files can be dangerous. Make sure you always make a backup first, and perhaps even heed the phrase "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." --Jason Denwood

Amazon.com Product Description
McAfee Utilities helps keep your computer running at top efficiency and speed with tools to optimize system performance and diagnose, repair, and prevent PC problems and crashes. McAfee Utilities is a comprehensive set of PC tools that will automatically back up important files, and zip, encrypt, shred, undelete, and defragment new files on the fly.

You can protect your data files with the comprehensive crash protection offered by McAfee Utilities. It enables you to reactivate crashed applications so you don't lose your data to faulty or conflicting software. And with Safe and Sound, you can make dynamic backups of the file types you choose and store them in a protected area on your drive. That will allow you to recover them should your hardware fail to function normally.

Features new to this version include the ability to defrag on the fly: ActiveTune keeps your drives optimized in real time. TaskMaster allows you to create multiple boot-up configurations customized for your needs. Lock your files securely; McAfee Utilities secures both e-mail and drives. You can even send self-decrypting files that only your intended recipient can open, even if he or she is not a McAfee user. Disk Minder and Disk Tune can analyze, monitor, diagnose, repair, clean, and optimize your PC more efficiently than before.

However two other features turned me off. Crash Guard did not work at all and Discover Pro repeatedly froze my system and forced me to power down whether I tried to run it from an installation on the hard drive or from the CD ROM.

All in all I found nothing exceptional about this product.