Question System Mechanic ( is it good? Or should I change?)

[Themasterofw]

My uncle swears by it stating its perfect for maintenance and that it should catch most viruses. We bought the pro package for it and while I have had no major virus take overs, I noticed that someone logged into my steam account( steam caught it and blocked them). I ran a virus scan but nothing; I also have system mechanic randomly closing whilst it tries to do some process's but not always. These process are defrag, regular cookie cleaning and I have seen it happen when scanning the system for viruses. This program supposedly initiates and completes regular maintenance tasks( not sure how well but you know uncle ...)

I would love a opinion on what I should do ( I also hear praises of its real time optimizations from my uncle).
All in all though I feel like my system has grown more sluggy-ish despite having over 400gb free and 16 gb of ram but this could be a case of I believe it used to be faster.
(As far as backups go I don't have many)

 

[Darkbreeze]

What version of Windows are you running?

 

[Themasterofw]

Windows 10

I always keep the windows defender firewall up as well.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Personally, I believe System mechanic was good for it's time back in the "long ago" days of some earlier versions of Windows. These days, it's relatively pointless and is a system resource hog to boot. As long as you are meticulous with your browsing habits, avoiding websites and torrents that are likely to contain malicious infections, and are halfway intelligent enough to manually keep your system clean and up to date, it seems like an unnecessary drain on resources and redundant in terms of protection.

Windows Defender and Windows firewall do an admirable enough job as is. If you want a more robust malware and antivirus protection utility it's pretty hard to beat Malwarebytes, although Spybot search and destroy is a bit cheaper. Personally I've been riding ONLY Windows defender along with good browsing habits and regular self maintenance to the system for a few years now with zero issues. It's a safe bet I do a good deal more of just about everything than the average person, so I'm sure my experience isn't due solely to a lack of exposure or minimal usage.

I'd ditch it. But that's just me. I assure you, any "optimizations" that it performs are grossly outweighed by the amount of resources it drains continuously but especially when "optimizing" something. You can do everything it can do, yourself, without the drain on resources.

 

[mdd1963]

Not one dime should be spent on any of the modern day software equivalents of PC Medic/Doctor, Norton Utilities, System Organizer, etc...

 

[Themasterofw]

Well we bought lifetime for like 3 systems it was a neat deal and didn't really cost much but huh a resource hog interesting. Task manager really doesn't show it using that much though 4 mb at best right now ( also what do you think I should do if anything about the steam acc thing I already changed the password. I know it doesn't really mean I have a virus .)

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

System Mechanic is not worth it. Poor piece of software.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I can't advise you what to do, nobody can here, in regard to your accounts. All I can say it is would be wise if you think you've been compromised online, to go to everyplace you typically frequent or have an account and change all your passwords to something you have NOT used on any other accounts, in case they have been compromised as well.

As far as what system mechanic shows as far as resources, you can't go by what you see in the task manager. First, task manager isn't even remotely accurate anyhow and second, many of these programs are just as good at hiding what their actual usage is, and splitting up usage among many different processes that you will probably not even recognize as BEING related to that program, as any infection would be. Believe me when I say that Norton AV, System mechanic, most McAffee products, and if you see it's name listed at the following link, it's a safe bet that the program is both unnecessary and undesirable. There is really nothing those programs do that is of any real benefit to you that you cannot do yourself manually with no need for a third party utility. Plus, many of them are known for MESSING THINGS UP when they shouldn't even be touching certain settings and files.

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[Themasterofw]

Thank you very much for your response as I had no real idea and had tried on multiple times to research system mechanic but kinda didn't get far.

 

[mdd1963]

The money is already spent/lost, and, you'd likely strike oil in your front yard before getting a refund due to claiming dissatisfaction, etc...

I'd still remove the application if/when I got the chance, lessons learned.

 

[JQB45]

I don't really like that the Windows Antivirus/Malware is undefeatable for some items and it is currently consuming over 220k on my system.

 

[Darkbreeze]

220k? That's like, less than a single notepad document. I don't get the point of that comment. Yes, Windows defender processes can use some substantial memory and CPU allocations, but it is still less than most other Antivirus or anti-malware applications and scanners.

Not sure about the undefeatable thing either. I've never had any issues creating exemptions for any file, folder or process in Windows defender and I have many of them in place on multiple drives and in multiple locations on the C: drive. Easily done if you look hard enough.

 

[JQB45]

Sorry I was missing some zeros. 310,998KB Commit, 70,686KB Working, 15,752KB Shareable according to Resource Monitor.

My issue was UAC at the time and not Windows Defenders Antimalaware/Antivirus, I did end up defeating UAC using powershell to install the application which UAC was preventing me, the issue was an incomplete certificate.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok, well User account control has little to nothing to do with Windows defender, and would be present whether you were using System mechanic, Windows Defender, Malwarebytes or a bowl of chicken soup, so I still think that has little bearing on the recommendations here. It certainly has bearing on general discussions of Windows but not in this case I don't think. I wouldn't say it's off topic, but it's riding close to that path.