For the past few years, I have been using a pretty basic Registry cleaner to optimize my PC and some client PCs. On top of that, I generally run a couple of anti-spyware products too. This usually gets the job done and PC performance will run pretty fast at all times.

Well, about a week ago, I was introduced to a product called “PC Health Advisor”. I was thinking, yeah great, another crappy Registry cleaner. So I went through the motions and got the download then ran the installer. Now when I first fired up this software, I realized this wasn’t just a Registry cleaner, but possibly the optimization tool that I had been dreaming of….So how did it measure up.

What is PC Health Advisor

PC Health Advisor is a complete optimization tool for your PC. Forget about Registry cleaners. This thing does that and a hell of a lot more. This product fully optimizes your PC by doing all of the following:

• Registry cleaning
• Malware detection and removal
• Disk optimization and duplicate finder
• Process manager
• Startup manager
• Restore point manager
• and more

This product covers all bases of optimization and PC error repair. I have written a lot of guides on manually optimizing disk and startup performance, but now this product incorporates all of that. So with one piece of software you can do everything. In the past, you could clean the Registry, but then you still had to perform disk optimization separately. Malware removal also required a separate program, but that is incorporated too.

You can download PC Health Advisor here

Using PC Health Advisor

Ok, so this product has a great feature set, but does it actually work and is it easy to use?

The installation process took under 2 minutes in total, on a Windows 7 64bit computer with 8GB ram. The total install was pretty small at under 10mb. So far so good.

I don’t read instructions, so after installing, I see these big buttons as options.  There are also tabs at the top of the program that give you access to each of the areas of optimization. You can access the process manager, startup manager, duplicate finder, browser manager, clear temp files, clear recent history, manage registry scan settings and so on.

The interface was all very intuitive. It took me less than a minute to figure it all out. There are quite a few options in there, some are not apparent directly from the main interface, but there is an excellent level of optimization available and this means faster computer. Anyway, after checking out all the settings I started the scan, which is the huge button on the main interface.

The scan results you can see below.

PC Health Advisor scans in three separate areas. The Registry, processes and privacy. The scan results, as you can see, incorporate all the different areas, privacy, Malware, startup, Registry etc. From here you can choose which area to optimize, or you can fix them all. Thankfully I have no Malware.

I didn’t fix all of the 268 items. I was able to check through the privacy files section and most of those were ok. Just a few that needed deleting, which i could do via the edit button. This was really cool, because you don’t always want to fix/remove everything. I did clean out the 193 Registry problems and the startup processes.

Duplicate File Finder

The scan doesn’t include the duplicate file finder. This is a separate section to the program but it will save you lots of disk space. I ran the scan on c: and located 252 duplicate entries. There were some doubled up folders I was not aware of.

Total disk space I saved from this was approximately 1.23GB. Not too bad for 30 seconds work. I know if I run this on some older PCs I will probably free up half the disk.

PC Health Advisor Good and Bad

Well this is a very solid optimization product, the best I have seen so far. I love the fact that it breaks down the scan into different sections and you can then view and optimize each one. It gives much greater control over the whole optimization process and I feel like I can now do away with much of the manual work I used to do.

This is essentially 3 or 4 products rolled into one. But the integration is excellent, so it doesn’t feel like you are using something that has just been patched together. I am still discovering some new features and techniques for better optimization within this software. It is a powerful tool, but so simple to use.

The only thing I am doubtful of is the Malware scanner. I don’t know how well this part has been done or how much it will actually find. I will perform further tests and compare with a fully fledged anti-spyware product.

The interface itself is great, but there are some features that you won’t immediately find. Some things are buried a bit and I would love to see all of these on the main interface. When you use this program, just take a couple of minutes to browse around, because you will find many features that are not evident at first.

9/10 from me. I have already deleted my old Registry cleaner.

Download PC Health Advisor at no cost

When we ran into trouble with a client’s PST file, we found there were a few products on the market. Many of them look similar and probably do a similar job.

Stellar PST Repair

So why did we end up using Stellar Outlook PST Repair?

The main reason was that we were impressed with the free download and simple to use interface. Once we had the product installed, it was able to quickly identify the problematic PST and provide a solution. A paid version is required to implement the real fixes, but saving our clients email was worth 100 times the asking price.

So What Does Stellar Outlook Repair Actually Do?

Stellar Outlook PST Repair scans all the damaged .pst files on your system, it then extracts and restores that information into new and usable .pst files – allowing you to completely and totally recover all your missing Outlook data… Fast! It can provide a quick fix for the following Outlook PST problems:

• Completely recovers emails, calendar entries, contacts, notes and journals from damaged PST files
• Repairs password protected files
• Restores Text, RTF and HTML messages
• Recovers data from encrypted files
• Repairs .pst files larger than 2GB
• Recovers deleted emails
• Creates unique profiles for individual PST files
• Exports recovered files automatically to Microsoft Outlook
• Includes a Live Update option to constantly update the software with the latest version
• Supports MS Outlook 97, 98, 2000, 2002 ,XP, 2003 & 2007

Using Stellar Outlook PST Repair

Here is a quick rundown of how we used the program and what you can expect. Getting started is really easy, just grab the download and install. Just follow the on-screen wizard, it should take no longer than about 2 minutes to get the product fully installed.

Once installed, just fire up the software. It is then just a matter of selecting the Outlook PST file to repair, or you can let the software find the PST files.

You will see a status bar showing the progress of the repair. Depending on how large the PST file is, this can take anywhere from 2 minutes to an hour. The software shows you what can be retrieved, then it outputs this to a new, fully working .PST file.

It is a very simple process and anyone can have this running in just a few minutes. You just select the corrupt file and this software throws out a working version.

What We Really Think of Stellar Outlook PST Repair

Well, in this area of computing, some software can be very intimidating. Luckily, Stellar Outlook PST Repair is not one of these products, instead it is very simple to use and any user can get results fast. Just open the program, choose the .pst files you want to repair and recover, select a destination, and click to restore. Watch the slider-bar glide across the screen to indicate your important Outlook data has been completely revived!

The interface is fast loading and very intuitive. So once you install the product, you can get started immediately without having to read through pages of documentation. Just note: the recovery process can be slow depending on your CPU, RAM and the size of your PST file. If it is a very large file, you will need to be patient. So after running the recovery, we recommend that you let it completely finish before using your computer.

I really like this product, because it did the job. It was very easy to install and you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to run the scan and repair. I think the only downside is that it could have been a bit cheaper. But then again, this is a solid product and obviously a lot of development time has gone into this.

If you value your email and want it back, check out this product. You can get it from our downloads page.

Visit our free downloads page