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Very nice MANUAL tool set.
Not complete — missing many tweaks I like, such as removing Libraries and user files from My Computer display in Windows File Explorer, turning off CD / USB auto play, and hundreds of other settings to undo Microsoft’s devolutionary craziness, so stop letting Microsoft make every single fricking operating system a new-fangled and arduous relearning how to your your own dang resources on your own dang PC … don’t get me started.
Some features in this toolkit are hard to find otherwise in other programs or via manual tweaks ( such as relocating default directories, for example, I prefer C:\Documents\A-Z\ C:\Temp\all-temp-directories, C:\Music, and so on, so all my users use the same directory resources, and all hard drives back up on top of each other in the same pattern of resources, just as I have had my filing set up for 30+ years since DOS and the first hard drives ).
There is some unnecessarily awkward wording ( “enable / disable feature on / off” — huh? — instead of a coordinated list of all features, with a simple on or off or variable column to the right, “Disable NTFS last access time update – on / off” versus “Write file’s last access time to disk – on / off or yes / no” ).
The ability to delve deep into their settings to see how they are constructed is educational — very thorough, helps make the Windows Registry somewhat approachable.
Some tools in the left column open their information in the right side of the same window, some open in entirely new windows, very inconsistent and hard to manage my sequence trajectory through the tool suite.
There is no [ Back ] or [ Return to Main Window ] on sub windows, you have to [ X ] out of sub windows, making me think I am exiting the program altogether.
The “Ignore List” is educational — apparently areas that other programmers create that are erroneous, but if you clean them, things crash, so ChemTable has learned to keep hands off ( they do ignore *.ru web addresses, hmm !).
It offers installer execution tracking, useful for manual scrutiny, I suppose … I wish someone would redevelop a smart feature to enable capturing an entire program and making it migratable to another computer, complete with serial number registration in the registry, and all ‘babies’ scattered throughout the directory tree, the way Quarterdeck did with their first glorious registry cleaner ( since bought and dismantled by evil Symantec through their “growth by acquisitions” department because they never had creative programmers in house ).
Most importantly, it has an “Undoing Changes Center” where you can look at what you have done, in date order, and undo your changes line by line.
All in all, an excellent tool kit that I will recommend to fellow techs, and to PC users who want to learn what’s happening inside their computer’s program choices — but I will not leave this in end-user’s hands without their technical buy-in ( Kerish Doctor is about the safest powerful auto-tool I can think of to leave on for the end user — does anyone else have a list of their preferred safe / dangerous programs for end-user? ).
Thanks, Ashraf, good hunting.
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