TuneUp Utilities is a utility software suite for Microsoft Windows designed to help manage, maintain, optimize, configure and troubleshoot a computer system. It is produced and developed by
TuneUp Software GmbH, headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany and co-founded by Tibor Schiemann and Christoph Laumann in 1997.
[3][4] The American version of the software is distributed by
TuneUp Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of TuneUp Software GmbH located in Miami, Florida
As of 2011, nine versions of TuneUp Utilities have been released and the number of included components have been increased from sixteen to thirty-two. TuneUp Utilities have attained generally positive reviews, although multiple reviewers did not approve of its price for value.
Features
TuneUp Utilities 2012, the latest version of the product, consists of 30 different components, all of which can be accessed from within a central hub, called TuneUp Start Center. Most of these components can also be invoked from the Start menu. TuneUp Start Center itself can show the components either in a category view (default) or in a list view.
Status and recommendations
The Status and recommendations category houses four sub-sections: 1-Click Maintenance, Performance Optimizer, Fix Problems and Live Optimization. The 1-Click Maintenance section runs multiple routine maintenance tools at once. The Performance Optimizer and Fix Problems utilities are intended to provide tips to identify and fix potential problems and increase performance, such as disabling unnecessary visual effects and disabling or removing unused Windows services and programs. Live Optimization, according to the application’s author, is intended to improve the responsiveness of Windows applications by tweaking their execution priorities.
TuneUp Utilities 2012 in list view mode, showing all its 30 components.
System Optimizations
The Optimize system section includes TuneUp Program Deactivator, which unloads programs from memory and prevents their further automatic execution, an alternative to uninstalling them. While disabled programs continue to consume disk space, they no longer affect the startup time, the shutdown time and the system performance. Other components include a defragmentation tool, a registry cleaner, and a startup manager to replace MSConfig.
Disk cleanup
The Gain disk space section itself is a disk cleanup component which replaces Windows Disk Cleanup. It also gives access to TuneUp Disk Space Explorer(a disk space analyzer) and TuneUp Shredder (a data erasure tool).
Troubleshooting tools
The Fix problems section provides access to TuneUp Repair Wizard which allows users to selectively repair problems that TuneUp Utilities cannot automatically detect; e.g. icons getting corrupted or items like My Computer and Recycle Bin permanently vanished from Windows Desktop.
Also in this category, there is TuneUp Disk Doctor. It can check the integrity of files stored on hard disk drives and salvage damaged files. It can also scan for physical defects known as bad sectors and isolate them. TuneUp Disk Doctor is a graphical replacement for Windows CHKDSK.
Other items include a task manager, a system information tool and an undeletion tool.
Windows customization
The last section provides access to TuneUp Styler and TuneUp System Control. TuneUp System Control is a program that allows access to some of the obscure or harder-to-access settings of Microsoft Windows, similar to Tweak UI. TuneUp Styler allows for customization of the Windows user interface by changing the desktop appearance, icons, and the logon and startup screens.
Turbo Mode
The
Turbo Mode, accessible from the bottom of Start Center, gives system a performance boost by temporarily disabling some of Windows services and features of user’s choice, such as
Windows Aero themes and visual effects.
Economy Mode
The Economy Mode accessible from the bottom of Start Center, gives system a more battery power to save by reducing background programmes and CPU power to saves battery.