Free Windows Tuner - Is the program safe and real?

feardaduck · 10 Jul 2012

So I was searching around on softpedia when I ran into this program. It seemed like a nice choice for what I was looking. I downloaded it and installed it. After, I did a spybot scan and it found something like "chameleonman toolbar". I deleted it. Im not sure if it was this program or some other things because I did try other programs earlier. Is anyone able to test it out and confirm its safe and it actually makes a difference? I ran it and it seemed real enough. I also submitted the install file to virus total and it came out clean. Here is the site.
Speed up your Windows

Thanks

solarmystic · 10 Jul 2012

Hello feardaduck,

As a simple rule of thumb, Windows 7 does not require any of those 3rd party tuning programs or utilities or even tweakers that claim to increase your performance; Microsoft has already strove to create the perfect out of the Box experience for Windows 7, and it's reflected almost everywhere you look in the OS.

Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Boot Performance - Engineering Windows 7 - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Those 3rd party utilities often don't really help your system as they claim, and sometimes can cause more harm than they're worth to your system.

That being said, if you wish to optimize your Windows 7 installation with some tried and tested methods, refer to this following tutorial.

Optimize Windows 7

BrownChiLD · 11 Jul 2012

hi

I will have to agree with solarmystic On this one. But, while it is True that almost everything you need to tweak and make your system perform faster is built into the Windows 7, tweak tools like this in question are very very useful as well. I do a lot of systems a lot and I try to make each system I build as efficient and as fast performing as possible by turning off a lot of unnecessary services in heavy theme options and all that and it does get very tasky to go To each setting, into the registries, and all of that just to make these tweaks. Sometimes I get the point that I forget to turn on this turn off this to optimize this etc. etc. So these tools don't really give you anything you to make your system run faster but it puts everything into one place which makes it easier for everybody , both newbies and to a seasoned and administrators who does this a lot.

so I for one am for these kind of tools but it's actually the user who can mess things up if they don't know what they're doing.

Now back to the topic, I'm also wondering if this tool is really good. I might tested today if I find time but it would be great if somebody could just let us know And save some time.

boohbah · 11 Jul 2012

as for having everything in one place for easy access dont forget "god mode"
to create a god mode folder ,
create a new folder and rename it ....

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

also you can add it to the control panel...

Control Panel - Add or Remove "All Tasks" (God Mode)

Dark Rider · 12 Jul 2012

I have to strongly disagree with solarmystic to an extent. Microsoft did a poor job of optimizing the Windows 7 system for performance. You can use the threads solarmystic mentions for some gain but it won't be much. You have to be aware of the 2 major things running on your system that will give you slowdowns (and that's assuming that you have no malware or system file problems) - those are the running processes and services that you don't need.

You will want to go to msconfig from the run box and stop any startup programs you don't need. Next go to the Processes tab and stop all running processes you don't need or want. Next disable all services in the services tab even all Microsoft services and only check the few services you really need to run your system and your desired apps. Reboot and Poof, you'll have a much faster and less resource intensive system.

Warning: You cannot do this in a day. You have to use sites like Google (to search), or Black Viper or a tool called SMARTv2 to learn about each and every process and service on your system and what they do to be sure you can safely turn off processes and services you wont need or want. Yes, you have to look them all up and do some heavy reading but really it is not that much and you can get through it quickly enough. Doing this research and trial and error takes a few days worth of work and learning.

SMARTv2 is a tool that can make most of these changes safely (and lets you change them back) but I don't use it because it does not disable many of the processes and services you can access through Msconfig - it leaves too many things alone you may want to disable.

Once you develop your magic list of processes, services and startup items write them all down in a text file. If your computer ever reverts to default settings with all processes and services enabled, you can always manually go in and make the changes again. I only use allow 18 services to run out of Microsoft's huge list and I can do everything I want to do on my PC from playing games to surfing the web - with much more resources free than I had before - even if they told you to set the services to manual or automatic to save resources, (through services.msc) you will still have many popping on and off as the system warrants and this can give you slowdowns. Don't set to manual or automatic - find out what you really need and permanently disable the rest. With only 18 services running, there is no application I cannot run. All the junk I disabled is stuff Microsoft deems you should run in the background most of the time and is never needed. You will know the ups and downs of these once you study the processes and services.

You might want to make good use of system restore or the much better RollBack RX while you go through this learning process.

The ideal system app that no one has made yet is a tool that lets you make a profile for processes and services so you can return to these settings on the fly by hitting a button - sadly it doesn't exist so you have to do all of this manually in Msconfig to remake these power changes from your list - but once you have it down, this only takes a minute to make the changes and reboot. Hope this helps.

Layback Bear · 12 Jul 2012

Here we go again.
No Windows 7 doesn't need or want those so call Tune Up programs. If one takes that day of Googling all those Tune Up web sites and turn into reading all the post here where such programs have screwed up gross numbers of computers, that would be a learning experience. Leave Windows Services alone. I don't think the super guru's here no how all those services interconnect with other things. Windows 7 is not XP that we tinkered with. Its 10 times better. Using are Tutorials here work well and keep you and your computer happy.

solarmystic · 12 Jul 2012

Dark Rider said:

I have to strongly disagree with solarmystic to an extent. -snip-

I'm quite aware of BlackViper and his website dealing with the services and processes of Windows 7.

I personally used (still am to an extent) to be an ardent supporter of his site and methodology for trimming down as many services as possible on my system. But that was when i was using Windows XP many years ago.

I will not deny that his website offers insight on the various 'configurations' of services and what each does (an invaluable service for the bleeding edge crowd), but the measured (in terms of RAM gained, or boot time reduced) impact of disabling those services, to me, isn't worth the hassle when it comes to Windows 7.

DustSailor · 12 Jul 2012

Did you know disabling services holds no benfit over setting them to manual? Did you know that any benefit in setting an automatic service to manual is very, very small (tested this many times in many computers)? Tell me that it was easy to disable services following BlackViper's advice (without any computer problems afterward) and I'll call you a liar.

It is truly a waste to disable services (spending countless hours on the project) when the benefit just isn't there. To install and use tune-ups and cleaners is also a waste without much benefit. In truth, windows 7 is very streamlined. These programs only serve to complicate it. As stated, we get many people in here who have problems with such programs. More problems arise from tuners than problems are fixed. Want a faster computer? Work that overtime and get one.

Don't get me wrong, Ccleaner is excellent when you need to remove something stubborn. Aside from that, it isn't going to offer much benefit. And this is the only program of its type I would ever recommend. All the rest just don't cut it.

Excellent tutorial on keeping your computer clean and quick, without any need to download programs: Optimize Windows 7

Layback Bear · 13 Jul 2012

I will also give a

to the Optimize Windows 7.

pparks1 · 13 Jul 2012

Dark Rider said:

I have to strongly disagree with solarmystic to an extent. Microsoft did a poor job of optimizing the Windows 7 system for performance. You can use the threads solarmystic mentions for some gain but it won't be much. You have to be aware of the 2 major things running on your system that will give you slowdowns (and that's assuming that you have no malware or system file problems) - those are the running processes and services that you don't need.

I agree about shutting down most unneeded things from msconfig. No argument there.

With respect to services, my experience says leave them alone. I've not found any quantifiable gain to shutting these off. Cannot prove anything is better with a stopwatch. In fact, as I shut more and more off, the system actually gets slower and slower in my tests. In theory, I would have more resources and thus it must be better...but real world experience is not showing this to be true for me or many others here.

Dark Rider said:

Doing this research and trial and error takes a few days worth of work and learning.

Bet you will never earn back a few days of time though by the resources saved with all of the tweaking.

Dark Rider said:

Once you develop your magic list of processes, services and startup items write them all down in a text file. If your computer ever reverts to default settings with all processes and services enabled, you can always manually go in and make the changes again. I only use allow 18 services to run out of Microsoft's huge list and I can do everything I want to do on my PC from playing games to surfing the web - with much more resources free than I had before

Could you please provide me with this list, I would like to time a handful of tasks on my PC and then would like to implement your magic list and run the same handful of tests on my pc and time the change with a stopwatch?

This seems to me to be one of those cases where I ask the person if they did time tests before they made changes and compared them to results after the changes...and the answer I always get is, "Naw, I don't like taking the time to measure all of that stuff, it's boring and mundane", "Or I didn't think about it until I already made all of the changes, I don't want to go back and reset my config to gather this info". Instead they like to say, "it feels so much faster". Really, it feels faster, but you don't really know that it actually is??????