The Fix Is In: Top Windows Utilities
Sure, Windows has its own built-in set of utilities. But you can do better. We examine dozens of third-party utilities to find the best tools for fine-tuning your PC.
Crash Prevention: The Big Freeze
Buy a suite with crash protection--and don't forget to save your work often.
If you use Windows, you know all about crashes. These scourges have many causes--applications with conflicting system demands, corrupted Registry or other system files, poorly written or incompatible drivers. Sometimes they happen while Windows is loading, sometimes while you're happily working away. But whenever a crash happens, and whatever the cause, you can lose valuable data and precious time.
Though Windows 98 is much better than Win 95 at avoiding these dread events, it remains far from crashproof. Two kinds of third-party utilities can help. The first type intercepts application crashes as they happen and (you hope) keeps your whole system from coming down. The second, less proactive type just tries to clean up the mess afterward.
Preventing the Big Bang
We looked at two crash interceptors--Norton CrashGuard 4 and Quarterdeck Crash Defender 2 Deluxe. Both products are owned and distributed by Symantec, and both are designed to intercept application and system error messages. Once you've installed a crash interceptor, it replaces Windows' general protection fault reports with a dialog box that offers you the option of "unfreezing" the application, giving you a chance to save open data files before Windows restarts.
Both tools successfully rescued data from crashes we created in Microsoft Publisher 97/98 and Office 95 and 97. But choosing the unfreeze/antifreeze option at times allowed a problem to spread to the rest of the system, forcing a hard reboot.
CrashGuard has a slightly greater feature repertoire than Crash Defender. Beyond the unfreeze/antifreeze option both programs offer, CrashGuard provides specific commands to relaunch and save data from a failing app. But in the same situations, Crash Defender's single unfreeze option saved our data just as well.
But whatever its features, a stand-alone crash monitor doesn't make much sense economically. For $20 more, you can buy the complete Norton SystemWorks, which includes a copy of CrashGuard. Crash protection is just one more reason to buy the suite. (Symantec plans to stop selling CrashGuard 4 as a stand-alone product as of August 1999.)
A word of caution: Crash interceptors--particularly those whose version numbers end in "0"--are among the leading causes of complaints to PC World's Bugs and Fixes column. From the available evidence it appears that crash protectors create just as many problems as they solve.
After the Crash
Instead of intercepting crashes, WinRescue 95/98 and Reset 2000 try to mop up the mess crashes leave behind. But neither utility is essential.
WinRescue creates a multitude of system archives, each containing the current or last-known good Windows Registry, plus .ini files, DOS system files, Desktop configuration, Start menu, and IE Favorites links. (Users can customize backups to include additional specified files and directories.) But if you're willing to tweak some settings, Windows 98's ScanReg can do pretty much the same thing.
ReSet Software's ReSet 2000 is more extensively automated. It automatically creates and maintains five copies of the Windows Registry, Desktop, Start menu, and system configuration files. After that, if Windows fails to start, a preboot screen allows you to restore the last good configuration. Unfortunately, though, ReSet 2000 costs about $50.
If your system crashes often enough to make that a worthwhile investment, you're better off buying Norton SystemWorks, which includes CrashGuard and a Rescue Disk feature, plus diagnostics, Registry optimization, and protection against trashed FATs and directory problems caused by viruses. Windows 95 users don't get Win 98's ScanReg tool; if you're one of them and you absolutely, positively don't need any other utilities, you might consider WinRescue.
--Lenny Bailes
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