The top of the interface allows you to do a basic checkup, cleanup and speedup. It has security tools and an app manager as well.

Beneath this toolbar, you will find a quick synopsis of your system’s performance with regard to CPU load, upload / download speeds, CPU temperature, memory usage and disk access speed.

Under this area you can pick from a predefined set of features such as Game Turbo Booster, Duplicate file finder, Password Manager, File Recovery, Startup Optimizer, and Process manager.

You will find an overlay running while you have this software up and running. It will show you at all times the current upload and download rates.

The left side window where most of the notifications of your system issues are located you will find a globe. This globe changes in color and level depending on the perceived issues within the system. During use, the program will indicate which file is currently being deleted, moved, copied or defragmented.

Many of the submenu items such as Startup Optimizer have elegant and simple 1 click options that allow you to quickly change many hidden power-user features within Windows.

There is a network monitor that will show you when a program is utilizing your network connection, what it is doing and if you should be concerned. It takes the benefits of a program such as Close the Door and places it within this elegant interface.

There is even an App Manager that resembles the Add or Remove Programs portion of the Windows Control Panel.

Basic tools include:

• File Shredder – DOD file delete
• Disk Wiper – High level formatter deletes the MBR and all files on that drive
• Disk Doctor – Checks the overall health of the drive (resembles the old Win 98 Disk Defrag screen).
• Duplicate file finder – Very handy if you have multiple instances of files hidden all over your drive
• File Recovery – Attempts to pull files from damaged media

Advanced tools include:

• Registry backup and restore
• Registry Defrag – This is very slick way to clean the registry
• Encryption and Decryption – You can encrypt and decrypt a file here and include a password and even a hint for the password.
• Password Generator
• Game Turbo Booster – This Defrags game specific folders and kills extraneous network usage. It turns off Windows Update, printer support, web proxy auto discover and other services.
• Running Drivers – Here you get a complete list of the current drivers, manufacturers and versions plus memory locations of the driver

Super Tools include:

• Internet explorer manager – Allows for under the hood editing of how IE works
• Context menu manager – Remove reorder and replace contextual menu items (a must have if you install many programs)
• Super Explorer – Analyze the file system outside of the window API
• Super Registry – Analyze the registry outside of the window API to find hijacked or hidden registry issues
• MBR Backup and restore – Keep a copy of your MBR on a thumb drive and restore it later if it becomes corrupt.

There are many other freeware programs out there that cover what this program does. None do it in an interface that is both simple and elegant at the same time. On the surface it appears simple, user friendly and kind of fun. If you dig deeper, you can unlock some very powerful features of this free software package. Have fun! You can download the latest version of Toolwiz Care from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Tweaking applications like Mz 7 Optimizer are the preferred way of many Windows users to apply those tweaks. While it is theoretically possible to apply them all manually, it often requires deeper knowledge of the operating system and research on the tweaks. Not to mention the time it takes to apply multiple tweaks manually.

Mz 7 Optimizer is a sophisticated tool to apply tweaks to Windows 7. The program suggests to create a backup of the Windows Registry on first startup. Users should accept that for an option to restore the Registry in case tweaks go bad. While it is unlikely that they do, it is always a good idea to have a way to restore a previous state of the operating system.

The main interface of the program is divided into a left sidebar, that links to tweaking categories like performance, Internet or security tweaks and other tools offered by the software. Each category contains multiple tabs at the top that group the tweaks further.

The Internet tweaks category for instance lists network tweaks, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, each with their own distinct tweaks.

Tweaks are not explained in the program interface, but in the help that is linked from the header of the program. It takes some time to find the right information in the help file as the program does not link directly to the help topics on the active page. To find out what Disable NTFS Paging File Encryption does in the Hard Disk Tweaks tab of Performance Tweaks, users would have to click on the Help button at the top, then on Tweaks > Performance Tweaks > Hard Disk Tweaks to see the answer.

A direct help, for instance with an overlay would be very helpful. Users who are in a hurry or know what they are doing can use an automatic optimizer to optimize Windows 7 with a few clicks. This is done by selecting how the computer and Internet connection should be optimized:

automatic tweaker

Mz 7 Optimizer offers several other interesting options, for instance a link to the ultimate Control Panel. This special control panel links to all Control Panel options from a single page.

ultimate control panel

The program links to several additional tools and applications in the Useful tools section. Users find programs to optimize the CPU and computer memory, clean and defrag the PC, manage startup items or a shutdown scheduler.

Mz 7 Optimizer is one of the most sophisticated programs when it comes to tweaking the Windows 7 operating system. Lots and lots of options and interesting features.

So, what kind of tweaks are offered by Mz 7 Optimizer?

Performance Tweaks

Cpu Tweaks

mz 7 optimizer

• Enable system cache optimization – Enabling this tweak, can automatically optimize Windows 7 system cache in relation to the L2 cache of your CPU.
• Increase IRQ priority of the CMOS real-time clock – Optimize overall system performance, by increasing the IRQ priority of the CMOS real-time clock.
• Force Windows to redetect processor’s features on the next Windows startup – This option forces Windows to run a processor check routine on system startup, to determine whether your processor supports Windows 7 advanced CPU memory management features.
  The CPU check routine will be executed only once on the next system start. There is no need to execute it on every start.
• Processor Priority Control – This tweak can be used to force Windows to optimize CPU usage for applications or background tasks.

Hard Disk Tweaks

• Disable NTFS ‘Last Access Update Stamp’ – This tweak can speed up disk operations. Windows file system will not record the last time a file was accessed, anymore.
• Disable 8.3 filename creation – If you don’t use 16 Bit applications, turning off this check box can speed up file system operations
• Increase NTFS memory usage – Increasing physical memory does not always increase the amount of paged pool memory available to NTFS. This setting raises the limit of paged pool memory. This improves performance if your system is opening and closing many files in the same file set and is not already using large amounts of system memory for other applications or for cache memory.
• Disable NTFS drive encryption – The Encrypting File System (EFS) allows you to secure data on NTFS volumes, but it also adds some processor overhead to your machine and can affect the performance of some applications. By checking this option, you can increase hard disk performance.
• Disable compression on NTFS volumes – Disable compression feature on NTFS volumes, to gain file access speed.
• Disable NTFS Paging File encryption – Disable paging file encryption feature on NTFS volumes, to gain file access speed.
• Always keep Windows 7 kernel in memory and never page it to disk – This tweak will keep drivers and the Windows 7 kernel always in memory and never page them to disk if not in use.
• Master File Table (MFT) size – If you have a NTFS formated volume enable this setting to reserve a large space for the Master File Table (MFT). This will help you to minimize fragmetion to this file. If you have a big amount of files, try to reserve more space for MFT. Works best when activated before files are copied to a volume.

Memory Tweaks

• Unload unused dlls from memory when not in use – Windows, automatically unload .dlls, that they have not been used after a period of time. But this inactive period might be too long at times and cause performance slow downs. Enable this option to disable Windows, holding the .dlls in memory.
• Run 16-bit applications in a separated virtual machine (WDM) – This option forces every 16-bit application to run in its own process
• Enable file system cache memory optimizations – Mz 7 Optimizer can optimize the Windows 7 file system cache in relation to the installed amount of RAM.
• Increase additional worker threads for the running processes – A computer that’s placed under heavy load conditions quite often may benefit from having more system worker threads, which perform things like clean-up after a process quits running.
• Optimize Memory Usage Allocation For – This tweak can be used to force Windows Vista, to optimize the memory usage for applications or system caching.
• Windows Prefetch And Superfetch Technologies – These options can boost Windows 7 boot and application launching

Windows Tweaks

Core System Tweaks

core system tweaks

• Restart Desktop and Taskbar automatically after errors – Windows Desktop or Windows Taskbar will be restarted if an error occurs.
• Optimize the hard disk(s) when they are idle – If enabled, Windows will automatically defrag the hard disk(s), in times of low activity.
• Launch folder windows in a separate process – This option, controls whether each folder window is launched as a separate explorer task. The advantage is that on crashes the others processes should be not be affected and the disadvantage is that that it takes more system resources for each folder.
• Launch Desktop and Taskbar in a separate process – By default Windows creates one multi-threaded Explorer process which contains the Desktop, Taskbar and all other explorer instances. If one of these instances fails, all instances will fail. When enabled, this setting causes Windows to create separate processes insulating them from other failures.
• Turn off program compatibility assistant – The PCA monitors user initiated programs for known compatibility issues at run time. Whenever a potential issue with an application is detected, the PCA will prompt the user with pointers to recommended solutions. This option is useful for system administrators who require faster performance and are aware of the compatibility of the applications they are using.
• Disable file caching for the Workstation service – This option is useful, if you are experiencing problems with workstations flushing data to the server.
• Disable WMI event logging – Disable WMI events – These logs are mostly necessary for WMI script developers or system administrators when searching for the cause of errors. For the average user these logs makes no sense and can just as well be disabled to avoid unnecessary I/O and defragmentation.

Startup Tweaks

• Enable boot defragmention – Windows 7 have the ability to do a boot defragment. This places all boot files next to each other on the disk to allow for faster booting. This option turns on this feature.
• Turn off the Windows startup sound – This option disables the Windows login sound.
• Run startup scripts asynchronously – Use this option to optimize the startup/logon processes so users can logon before startup scripts have finished.
• Restore folder windows at startup – If enabled, Windows will attempt to re-open any folders that were already open when the system was last shutdown.
• Disable updating Group Policy during startup – If you enable this policy, the system does not wait for Group Policy updates to complete before inviting the user to log on. As a result, the Windows interface might appear to be ready before computer Group Policy is applied.
• Disable auto-detection on IDE drives during startup – Another quick trick for a faster boot up is to disable the auto detection that Windows 7 uses to determine if there are IDE devices present in any of the IDE slots on the motherboard. More specifically, disable this feature on any empty slots to prevent the operating system wasting time and resources checking them.
• Delay for check disk scan times at startup – This tweak reduces the delay time of Windows Autocheck disk that it takes to start.

Shutdown Tweaks

• Power off button action – This options specifies the start menu power off button action.
• Clear the system pagefile on system shutdown – This option makes your computer more secure and helps boost performance of the paging file by keeping it clean and unfragmented. Also, it may make the shutdown process slower.
• Automatically close non-responding applications – Processes do not end automatically. The system waits until the process ends and if the process takes more time than the value of the Hung application timeout entry, then the End Task dialog box appears, stating that the application cannot respond to the End Task request. With this tweak enabled, crashed processes will end automatically.
• Time to wait when a program hangs – Windows waits by default a long time to finally acknowledge that a particular program is ‘Not responding’, and only after that allowing you to shut it down by clicking the End Task button. Configure the waiting period here.
• Time to wait before ending programs with errors – This value sets the timeout until Windows shuts down/restarts, while trying to end open programs. Configure the waiting period here.
• Time to wait for services to end before killing – This value sets the timeout until Windows shuts down/restarts, while trying to end open services. Configure the waiting period here

Internet Tweaks

Network Tweaks

• Limit reserved bandwidth (Quality of Service) – This setting determines the percentage of connection bandwidth that the system can reserve for Windows QoS (Quality of Service) traffic. By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection. Setting it to 0, to increase network bandwidth.
• TCP (Transmission Control Program) window size – The TCP window size is the amount of data that can be transmitted over the network before an acknowledgement is needed from the destination server. If you set this too low, you will incur a lot of overhead. If you set it too high, too much data will have to be retransmitted if the destination server does not acknowledge the packets.
• Enable large TCP window (RWIN) support – Enables Large TCP Window support as described in RFC 1323. Without this parameter, the TCP Window is limited to 64K
• Enable CTCP as the default congestion control provider – CTCP increases the TCP send window more aggressively for broadband connections than the traditional slow-start algorithm. Enabling this option can improve network performance.
• Disable windows scaling heuristics – This tweak will enforce any user-set TCP Window auto-tunning level.
• Enable DCA (Direct Cache Access) – Direct Cache Access (DCA) allows a capable I/O device, such as a network controller, to deliver data directly into a CPU cache. Enabling DCA reduce memory latency and the memory bandwidth requirement in high bandwidth environments.
• Enable NetDMA (TCPA) – Enable this twea to free the CPU from handling memory data transfers between network card data buffers and application buffers by using a DMA engine.
• Optimize keep alive time – This setting controls how often the server should check if an idle connection is still “alive” by sending a single TCP/IP packet to the client. If enabled and if the client does not react on this keep alive packet, the keep alive connection is freed, thus also freeing resources.
• Optimize DNS error caching – This option, is an easy way to help speed up Web browsing, by optimizing DNS cache times.
• Optimize host resolution priority – This tweak improves DNS and hostname resolution in general. It helps web pages load faster, and has negligible effect on downloads.

Internet Explorer

internet explorer tweaks

• Disable page transitions – Internet Explorer supports page transition animations that some web developers may apply when entering or exiting a page. These include wipes, blends, and dissolves. If you find webpage transition animations annoying when browsing, this tweak disables them.
• Disable Clear Type fonts – A feature of Internet Explorer is Clear Type which makes the text on a web page look smooth instead of looking crisp and sharp. Clear Type is supposed to make reading text easier on a web page. This tweak turns off Clear Type.
• Disable smooth scrolling – This setting allow you to disable the Internet Explorer smooth scrolling function, which on an low-powered system can cause performance degradation.
• Disable automatic updates – Disable Internet Explorer from updating automatically.
• Place the menu above the taskbar – This tweak place the Internet Explorer menu above the taskbar.
• Disable visual style controls – Disable visual styles on buttons and controls in Internet Explorer.
• Always show menus – Turn on the menu bar (File, Edit, View, …) in Internet Explorer.
• Maximum simultaneous downloads – By default, Windows Internet Explorer limit the number of files that you can download at one time to six. This tweak enables you to increase to this number of simultaneous downloads up to 20.

Customization Tweaks

Taskbar Tweaks

• Enable flashing Taskbar buttons – This tweak enable applications flashing their buttons on the Windows toolbar.
• Make Taskbar icons smaller – The size of the Windows 7 Taskbar icons is big or large, and taking up too much screen estate. With this option, it’s possible to make the icons in the Windows 7 Superbar smaller in size.
• Disable Taskbar balloon tips – Windows sometimes offers tips and advice to new users by opening a balloon window from the taskbar. The feature can disabled using this tweak.
• Number of items in the Jump Lists – This will show you how to change the number of Recent Items to display on the Start menu and taskbar pinned icon Jump Lists in Windows 7.
• Thumbnails preview display delay time – This will show you how to change the delay time for how long it takes to display taskbar thumbnail previews when you hover the mouse point over a pinned item or open window icon or button on the Windows 7 taskbar.
  Taskbar thumbnail previews will only work if you are using a Aero Theme.
• Taskbar thumbnail live preview delay time – If you hover your mouse cursor over the small thumbnail, Windows shows a live preview of the running application and makes all other running applications windows transparent. This tweak can be used to adjust the live preview delay time.

Windows Aero Tweaks

• Force enabling Windows Aero effects, by disabling hardware compatibility checking – If your graphic card doesn’t support Windows Aero Glass, here a trick that you can try to force Windows 7 to enable Windows Aero Glass on non-WDDM compatible or not Aero supported graphics accelerator card or processor, by disabling the check Windows 7 made to determines if your system hardware fulfills minimum requirements for Aero Glass window frame transparency.
• Disable Aero animations – One effect of Windows Aero is the effect of the animation such as flip, flip 3D or minimize the active window. This tweak disables this effect and reduces system resources.
• Disable Aero Snap – Aero Snap is a new feature in Windows 7 wherein the windows will automatically arrange (dock) when moved to the edge of the screen. When you drag a window to the left side of the screen, it will automatically dock to the left side of the screen taking half of the screen space. The same goes for the right side. When dragged to the top of the screen, the window maximizes. If you want to disable the automatic arrangement (Aero Snap) feature, check this option.
• Disable Aero Glass transparency – Windows aero transparency, also known as glass effect, which was introduced with the Windows Vista gives a new fresh look to your desktop. Windows Aero Glass Transparency effect uses a lot of graphics power. This tweak disables this effect.
• Disable Aero Blur effect – If you prefer windows to be more transparent rather than being translucent, check this option.
• Enable elongated buttons – This tweak will change the appearance of the minimize, maximize, and close buttons – elongating them or making them square (on natively supported cards the default is already set to elongated buttons).
• Enable slow animations when pressing the ‘Shift’ key – If Flip 3D menu is a bit to fast for you and want to slow down these animations temporarily by just pressing the ‘Shift’ key, check this option.
• Number of displayed windows in Flip3D – This is a useful tip for those of you that have low-end graphics cards and still would like to use the Flip3D feature. Reduce the number of displayed windows, to increase performance.
• Windows border width – This tweak will change the width of all the window borders, to what you want them to be.

Security Tweaks

Network Security

network security tweaks

• Prevent administrative shares on cluster nodes – This option disables the administrative shares on a Windows 7-based cluster
• Restrict anonymous user access – Windows has a feature where anonymous users can list domain user names and enumerate share names. Enable this option for enhanced security.
• Disable recent shares in network places – This restriction stops remote shared folders from being added to Network Places whenever you open a document in the shared folder.
• Hide entire network from neighborhood network – Entire Network is an option under Network Neighborhood that allows users to see all the Workgroups and Domains on the network. Entire Network can be disabled, so users are confined to their own Workgroup or Domain.
• Hide the server’s computer name from other computers in the domain – You can configure a computer so that it does not send announcements to browsers on the domain. If you do so, you hide the computer from the Browser list, which can help reduce network traffic.
• Disallow users to connect remotely using Terminal Services – Remote Desktop allows you to connect to your computer remotely and work as though you are sitting at the console. This tweak disables this feature.
• Disable automatic discovery of media contents in shared network by Windows Media Player – If you do not want to share files in a monitored folder that is located on another computer, check this option.

The cleaner resembles the popular program CCleaner. It dividedes the data that can be cleaned into the three tabs Windows, Applications and Browsers. These tabs are further divided into sections such as Windows History, Productivity or File Sharing.

Each section lists multiple program or data locations that can be cleaned by SlimCleaner. The Analyze button starts a scan of the system for the selected entries and displays the results in list form at the end.

slimcleaner

system cleanup

Each program or storage location that was found during the scan is displayed with the total amount of files and the combined data size on the computer. It is possible to run the cleaner right away, or click on any entry to view a detailed listing of every file, with the possibility to exclude items from the cleanup.

The optimization tool makes use of information from the cloud to rate a program in the startup tab. The rating gives the user immediate information about the startup program, which may be used to decide whether to remove it from the startup or not.

Each program entry is listed with a rating, publisher and startup command.

Additional information can be retrieved by following links to the developer’s website.

optimization

The Services tab lists all services and their current, original and supercharged state. Supercharged here is a special services configuration created by the developers of the software. It basically changes states to optimize the system.

A restore tab is available to undo changes that have been previously made.

The uninstaller uses the cloud to rate installed programs. That’s however the only difference to the standard Windows uninstaller. Still, it is interesting to see the rating, which may help users remove software with low ratings.

uninstaller

The file shredder can securely delete files in the operating system. It offers various shred levels like quick overwriting the files, or using the Guttman 35 overwrite algorithm. Files and folders can be added easily from within the program interface.

The Hijack Log creates a HiJack This log, again with ratings from the cloud whenever available. This can aid users in detecting potentially dangerous programs and objects.

Windows Tools finally leads to various Windows control panel and system tools.

windows tools

SlimCleaner shows a lot of promise. The program could use some polishing, the uninstaller for instance crashes the application on one of our test systems. All other sections worked fine though.

Specialized tools like CCleaner or Revo Uninstaller offer additional features that SlimCleaner in its current state is not offering. The cloud based rating system however is an excellent feature, even though many programs are not rated yet. This should change soon with the distribution of the software, as every user is able to rate software directly in the program.

SlimCleaner is available for download at the developer website. (via Beatmaster’s Winlite Blog)

The 1-click-maintenance module will scan the computer system for various problems and spyware. The main advantage of this over the individual modules is the ease of use. Five of the six possible scan options are selected by default. The computer user can make individual selections to add or remove options from the scan

• Registry Cleaner: Fixes invalid or incorrect Registry entries
• Shortcuts Fixer: Cleans up invalid shortcuts
• Startup Manager: Cleans up dangerous startup entries
• Temporary Files Cleaner: Cleans up temporary files and recovers disk space
• Tracks Eraser: Erases the activity history and Internet traces
• Spyware Remover: Removes spyware and adware

Each section will list the number of problems that have been found. A show details button is provided that will open a new window with all the issues and entries found. Checkboxes are provided that can be used to remove specific items from the cleanup process.

A click on the Repair Problems button will clean all issues that have been found by the program. It is therefor theoretically possible to perform a system cleanup with two clicks.

The Modules section offers a better selection of tools to optimize and cleanup the computer system. It uses a sidebar menu that changes the available options upon selection.

• Clean Up and Repair: Disk Cleaner, Registry Cleaner, Shortcuts Fixer, Uninstall Manager
• Optimize and Improve: Startup Manager, Memory Optimizer, Context Menu Manager, Registry Defrag
• Privacy and Security: Tracks Eraser, File Shredder, File Undelete, File Encrypter and Decrypter
• Files and Folders: Disk Analysis, Duplicate Files Finder, Empty Folders Finder, file Splitter and Joiner
• System Tools: Process Manager, Internet Explorer Assistant, Windows Standard Tools

Several of the tools offered are inferior to specialized software programs for that purpose. The Uninstaller provided by Glary Utilities will not scan for leftovers in the Registry or on the hard drive for instance which Revo Uninstaller does. A similar problem has the Startup Manager which does not display all startup items which programs like Autosruns do.

Other modules on the other hand provide exactly the options needed to work with them effectively. The context menu manager for instance provides an easy way of removing context menu entries in Windows Explorer.

Installation

Installation of Glary Utilities Pro is straightforward. It comes as a zipped file that extracts a setup.exe, activate.exe and the readme.txt. The setup of the program is started with setup.exe. Do not launch Glary Utilities Pro right away but start activate.exe first to register the product by connecting to the Giveaway of the Day servers. A successful connection to the servers will register the product.

Positive

• Two-click maintenance that can be scheduled
• Many different modules and options
• Compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows

Negative

• Some modules do not offer enough options to use them effectively
• No options to add locations or paths to the program that should be cleaned up, e.g. traces left by portable software.

Glary Utilities Pro is available for free today at the Giveaway of the Day website. The program needs to be installed and activated today for the free license to be issued. The developer’s website is available here.

Besides that quick maintenance mode it also comes with lots of additional modules that are divided up into the five categories Clean Up & Repair, Optimize & Improve, Privacy & Security, Files & Folders and System Tools. All of them with three to four modules that start various tools to maintain the operating system.

The Privacy & Security category for example contains a Tracks Eraser, File Shredder, File Undelete and File Encryption / Decryption tool. Having said that it should be obvious that the software combines the features of various popular utilities in one application. While it can replace many applications it does not come close to some of the top applications in their fields. Taking Eraser for example. Eraser lets users deleted unused hard drive space so that the data cannot be recovered anymore. Glary Utilities on the other hand can only delete files so that they cannot be restored anymore.

Glary Utilities provides many tools that can be used for system maintenance. It provides access to the tools in a clean interface and could be worthwhile to test for users who love all in one tools instead of specialized tools.

Desktop Maestro 2 offers three functions in the main menu. The first is scanning the Registry of the computer. A run on my system found 1880 problems that were listed in several categories like Custom Controls, Startup Programs and Add/Remove Programs. Each entry that was found was classified with a priority from low to highest. The second function can be compared to programs like CCleaner. It’s called Privacy Guardian and deletes temporary files and settings like the history. This section is divided into five parts including Windows, Browsers and Plugins.

The optimize button finally leads to a page with system information and three ways to optimize the system. It is possible to compress the Registry, defragment the hard drive and click on a Optimize the System button which apparently adds some tweaks and patches to the Windows Registry.

Several free programs can do the same, if you already have them installed there is not much need to install Desktop Maestro. If you want to take a look do the following.

• Head over to this or this url and enter your name and email to receive a free license key in your inbox. Then download the version of Desktop Maestro that was mentioned in the comments at the Tip and Trick website, the one hosted at Depositfile. Do not download it from the PC Tools website because your serial number will not work with that version.
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