The basic idea behind Ashampoo’s Core Tuner 2 is to give Windows users the tools at hand to distribute the computing power in an optimal fashion.

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Review

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 uses a clean interface. It displays all program modules in the left sidebar, and the corresponding information in the main area of the program window.

When you start the program, you see a list of all processes that are currently running on your system. Each process is listed with its name and description, the cpu and memory usage, the process priority and use of cpu cores.

One of the main features of the program is to change process priorities and cpu core use. The menu icons at the top of the window or the right-click context menu display the options to change those settings. It is furthermore possible to terminate a process right from that window.

All processes that are customized this way are listed under Rules. One interesting option is the ability to import and export rules, handy if you run Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 on multiple computer systems. Rules can be modified right in the rules menu as well.

The Profiles feature is an advanced feature. Profiles basically bundle multiple actions, like stopping system services or terminating processes. A gaming profile ships with the software, which terminates web browser windows, program update tools and several system services to improve gaming performance on the system.

Profiles can then be run with a right-click on the system tray icon and the selection of the profile in the context menu. It is possible to add additional profiles, for instance for video rendering, photo editing or any other task on the PC that taxes the system.

Sometimes though you can make changes to the system that are permanent in nature. For instance by removing programs from autostart or services that are not really needed for operating the computer.

That’s why Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 comes with an auto-start and Services module. The auto-start module lists all programs that are started automatically with the system.

One interesting feature is the rating system that displays user ratings of startup programs.

The Services module makes use of ratings as well. Some services are blocked from being disabled which makes sense as they are required to run Windows at all.

Installation

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 installation should not be problematic at all. Users should however pay attention to the installation dialog as the default installation tries to install a toolbar and make changes to the homepage and search provider of the web browser.

A ten-day trial version is provided at the Ashampoo website.

Verdict

Windows users who are experiencing lags and performance drops when they run multiple tasks on their system at the same time will benefit the most from Ashampoo Core Tuner 2, provided that they configure the process priorities, profiles and rules accordingly.

Users with high performance systems on the other hand may not see a difference at all, or only a slight difference that may not make a huge difference.

Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 Giveaway

Ashampoo were nice enough to give us 24 Ashampoo Core Tuner 2 licenses to give away. To enter the drawing for a license, tell me why you’d like the program.

I will draw the winners randomly from all users who have commented here. Winners will be announced in a week’s time here in this review.

Update: The winners are: Efthimios, MerleOne, Paul(us), Mike, Jordan Humberto de Souza, Midnight, kn0w, e1scd, SubgeniusD, Lee, jSwann0, Andrei, Michael Brazil, Jake, vhick, Mongoplus, Stefan Julian, G Rajesh, JAIME, VladM, RAGAGH, zoras, StingRay, alro

Unfortunately though, customer address data and email addresses were stolen by the hackers. Billing information, like credit card numbers or banking information have not been stolen according to Ashampoo who have put up a page with information about the issue on their official website.

Here is the official Ashampoo email:

Dear Ashampoo customer,

We are writing to you concerning an important issue. We regret to tell you that we also detected an unauthorized access to one of our server systems. We assume that the attackers were able to purloin data of customers. Sensitive data such as billing information etc. is not affected by this, because Ashampoo does not store this data.

We summarized all pieces of information concerning this incident for you and would like you to read the following website: http://www.ashampoo.com/datatheft

Yours sincerely,

The Ashampoo-Team

Emails are currently send out by hackers to Ashampoo customers that contain attached pdf documents. These pdf documents use a recently discovered security vulnerability in Adobe Flash to load malicious code on the system as soon as the pdf is opened on an unprotected system.

Ashampoo asks users to keep those emails unopened to avoid executing malicious code on the user system.

Hackers often follow the pattern that they make people insecure e.g. with a confirmation of an order whose attachment is then opened or rather executed. Generally it is always important that you stay suspicious of unknown senders and that you do not respond to requests that tell you to open attachments.

If you for example receive a confirmation of an order from PurelyGadgets or another company without having made an appropriate purchase there, please do not open the attachment and delete the e-mail immediately.

It is not clear which security issue is being exploited by the hackers. It is however likely that it is a recent vulnerability in Adobe Flash which has been patched by Adobe. An Adobe Reader and Acrobat update was released yesterday that addresses the vulnerability. Users who have not installed the patches yet should do so to protect their system from the exploit.

Ashampoo has scanned several pdfs that the hackers have send out at Virustotal; The result was that half of the applications detect the malicious code.

To sum it up: Do not open emails that are related to or appear to be from Ashampoo if those contain an attached pdf document. If you have to open it download it to the computer first and open it in an online pdf viewer such as Google Docs. That way you stay safe and the malicious code cannot execute. (thanks Danny for the tip).

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 can optimize supported Windows editions. The program runs a quick scan on startup to determine areas of interests. It will list unnecessary services that are running in the background, system settings that should be changed for better performance or security, unnecessary browser items and Internet traces, obsolete Registry entries and redundant files.

A click on Details next to an entry lists the proposed changes or items that have been found. Here it is possible to filter the results, select some or all of the items for cleaning or modification.

It is recommended to verify the listings before starting the optimization process. Each of the scanned items, like the Registry Optimizer or the Drive Cleaner are also accessible directly. The individual modules provide options to delete selected items directly which tech savvy users will probably prefer since it gives them more control over the deletion and optimization.

A click on Start Optimization runs the optimization script which will make the system changes and delete the invalid and redundant files and Registry settings on the system.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 Review

The core of the program is accessible through the left sidebar. The sidebar display optimization groups such as Maintain System, Improve Performance, Customize Windows or File Tools. A click on a group lists its modules, which usually ranges between four and five.

Maintain System

• One-click Optimizer – Clear up your hard drives, repair defective Registry entries, delete Internet traces.
• Drive Cleaner – Clear up hard drives, delete history, edit file and folder exceptions.
• Registry Optimizer – detect orphaned objects and references, correct errors.
• Internet Cleaner – Detect Internet traces, clean browser cache(s), delete history and cookies.
• Defrag 3 – Defragment hard drive(s), analyze file arrangements.

We have already looked at the one-click optimizer. The remaining modules, with the exception of Defrag are part of the optimizer. The Internet Cleaner supports not only Microsoft’s Internet Explorer but also Mozilla Firefox and Opera but only if they are installed on the system and not used as portable programs. The options detail which browser data gets deleted by WinOptimizer 7. Available choices offer the usual items like the cookies, manually entered urls or the browser cache. A Secure Cookie option is provided to protect cookies from being deleted by the optimizer. The options are directly accessible from each module which makes it easy to change and assess them before running an optimization module.

Several modules offer custom options. The Drive Cleaner for instance allows the user the creation of filters to clear specific file types from selected folders or drives.

Descriptions are displayed for each module when the user hovers the mouse icon over them. The excellent help goes into details and is linked to from every page.

Improve Performance

• Service Manager – Manage services, identify unnecessary services.
• StartUp Tuner – Manage autostart entries, delete / remove plugins.
• Internet Tuner – Automatically accelerate Internet connections, manually adjust system settings.
• Process Manager – Manage processes and applications, set priorities, show details.
• Uninstall Manager – manage installed applications, uninstall applications.

Both the Services Manager and the StartUp tuner displays user ratings for known services and programs to aid the user in the decision making process. The interface makes it quite comfortable to remove programs from the list of startup items and services from being started automatically. The startup manager lists not only applications but also Internet Explorer plugins, giving users options to remove plugins from the web browser and auto start this way.

Some modules do not offer more features than standard Windows applications. The Uninstall Manager for instance does the same as the Windows Control Panel applet. It would have been great if that module would offer a similar functionality like Revo Uninstaller to scan the system for leftovers after the installation. Then again, other modules of WinOptimizer can be (manually) used for that task.

Customize Windows

• Tweaking – Adjust system and performance settings, Edit display options,
• AntiSpy – Disable undesired data transmissions, deactivate potential spy functions.
• File Associator – Identify invalid data formats, assign data formats.
• Context Menu Manager – Edit entries in the Explorer context menu, remove unnecessary entries.
• Icon Saver – Save and restore icon positions, manage saved icon positions.

This group offers several tools that are highly requested by Windows users. AntiSpy for instance offers to disable some of the “phoning-home” features of Windows, the context menu editor options to remove entries from the context menu.

Tweaking leads to a whole new page with its own sidebar listing tweaks for Logon, Desktop, Internet Explorer and drives among others. This section alone is extensive enough that it probably could be a standalone program on its own. Want some examples? Users can configure an automatic logon so that they do not have to select a user and enter a password on system startup, change folder locations for folders such as My Documents, Templates or browser cache, uninstall Windows Messenger or configure caches for hard disks, file positions and path names.

Analyze System

• System Information – Show details on hardware, software, drives, and much more, Prepare reports.
• DiskSpace Explorer – Analyze hard drive usage, Reveal space-consuming programs, define your own groups.
• System Benchmark – Determine system performance, compare system performance.
• Disk Doctor – Check file system, correct errors in file system.

This group contains several interesting items. Disk Doctor for instance can check a disk health. It will report errors and offers to repair them if possible. The disk space explorer displays charts of a drive’s largest files and file distribution.

File Tools

• File Wiper – delete files permanently from the hard drive.
• Undeleter – scan hard drives for deleted files and restore them.
• File Encrypted and Decrypter – Tool to encrypt and decrypt files and create self-extracting exe files.
• File Splitter and Joiner – split and merge files.

Again a section with useful tools that many users will find handy at times. It is possible to recover deleted files or delete files so that they cannot be recovered by those tools anymore.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 creates backups of every action that is performed so that they can be restored in case that is needed.

Optimizing is actually just a part of what WinOptimizer has to offer. The program combines several tools in its interface that many users use individual programs for.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 Installation

The installation of Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 does not take long. Users should notice that the program displays a prompt to install the MyAshampoo Toolbar during installation. Options are provided to disable this so that the toolbar is not added to the web browser. The optimizer for Windows is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. It was tested on a Windows 7 64-bit Professional PC.

Interested users can download a trial version of WinOptimizer 7 from the following link.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 7 Giveaway

Ashampoo gave us ten licenses to give away. Just leave a comment below for a chance to win one of the licenses of the Windows optimizer.

The makers of Nero are now offering a stripped down version of Nero 9 for free on their website. Well, not totally free but if you give up an email address you can download and use the Nero 9 free edition. Nero 9 Free is only offering data disk burning and disk copying functionality. It still has a size of more than 55 Megabytes.

Nero 9 Free can be downloaded from the Nero website, or if that is preferred, from third party download portals like Softpedia where the download is also hosted. The benefit of downloading Nero 9 Free from these download portals is that no email address needs to be supplied before downloading the DVD burning software.

Nero 9 Free turns out to be Nero 9 Essentials which is a version of Nero that gets only distributed with hardware purchases. It should also be noted that the program will suggest to install the Ask Toolbar during installation. Make sure to uncheck the box if you do not want to install it.

Users who prefer lightweight might want to try out alternatives such as ImgBurn, Ashampoo Burning Studio Free or the recommendations in our best free burning software thread. Thanks Dante for the tip.