Can You Really Fix Your Computer with a Simple Click?
By: Will Claney
It looks as if the “infomercial” has at last come to the rescue of your beleaguered computer boasting a faster, cleaner computer with only a few clicks. Yes, a few simple clicks and you’ll never again have to spend your money to buy a new computer or worry about virus and malware damage, whoa never again endure the pain of a slow computer because the day has come that a fix is - just a click away. All it will take is a simple scan utilizing their software from their web page it will find and fix bugs on your computer, doubled your speed, and now you are “finally fast”.
TV and radio ads blast advertiser’s claims that they will fix your computer from all sorts of irritants and issues. With a simple click virus and malware will be banished, and your computer glitches will be repaired so your computer will recover its old speed, no, no be twice as fast as it originally was. All you need to do is visit their web site for a free scan.
I wanted to review these sites and evaluate the validity of their claims. I started my quest by taking a perfectly good computer with a clean fresh load of Windows XP and not installing any Internet protections. So, my computer had no antivirus, malware or security protection, no pop-up blockers, no anti-phishing, nothing. I must say it didn’t take long to infect the computer.
Using my infected test computer I began logging onto all the sites that make big claims that they could fix my computer and increase its speed simply by letting their web site scan my computer and remove unwanted items. I visited mycleanpc.com (my clean pc dot com), fastatlast.com (fast at last dot com), finallyfast.com (finally fast dot com), maxmyspeed.com (max my speed.com), pcmatic.com (pc matic dot com), stopsign.com (stop sign dot com) and doublemyspeed.com (double my speed dot com) to put each to the test using my known infected computer as a baseline. After each site was visited and the tests were done, I checked the findings against the professional tools I normally use to fix computer glitches, virus, malware and a host of other issues.
I began the test thinking highly of each of the companies that claimed to fix computers. I thought it was a splendid idea that visiting a web site could help me do my job more efficiently. I had been thinking of creating just a site. Besides, the actors seemed so excited and convincing. So, I thought, why reinvent the wheel just find the right site and use it.
I am saddened to say, that after all the hype and hyperbole none of these sites did anything meaningful. Some sites actually further infected my test computer with pop-ups and annoying announcements to buy the product.
Here is my opinion and brief synopsis of my findings. Mycleanpc.com, maxmyspeed.com and doublemyspeed.com are the same company using the same software and techniques. Their scan took under five minutes to complete. The results claim you have “user and system software”, activeX, and file association errors that should be fixed. The scan counted 458 errors on my test computer which is impressive for a five minute scan. However, none of the errors it found was significant. It could be argued that some of the errors found were valid, however they had little or nothing to do with increasing the speed or stability of a computer. In fact most of the errors found were bogus. The actual known malware and virus on the computer were never found.
Fastatlast.com and finallyfast.com are the same company, a five minute scan had similar results as my first review except it did find a few legitimate registry errors, however not enough to impact the performance of the computer or live up to its claims.
Pcmatic.com, perhaps the least impressive of the bunch, used a totally useless bar chart and color code to estimate the threats in my test computer. It basically found nothing and, in my opinion, is a complete scam.
Stopsign.com seemed to be the best of the breed, but that’s like saying you’d rather smell a rotten banana than eat it. The scan process was inadequate and took an inordinate amount of time compared with professional tools. The “Threat Scanner” took approximately 80 minutes to process approximately 84,000 threat signatures vs. SpyBot (a product we recommend for years, and you can download and use for free) processing approximately 937,000 threat signatures in approximately 30 minutes.
I used Spybot in my baseline tests because I feel this product is very near professional grade but still usable by most computer users. In other words, it’s not too “geekie” for regular people to use and understand. Spybot found 48 malware signatures, all of which were valid and the majority impacted the performance of our test computer. All the test sites (other scanners) combined were only able to pickup three of these real threats.
To be clear, I use much stronger tools in the shop to fix computers than I mentioned here, however Spybot is one of our “standard” scanners and adequate for comparison purpose.
In summary, I am extremely disappointed in all the products being offered that claim to fix infected or broken computers. None of them could find and cure real issues or return your computer to working order. In my opinion, the personal testimonials claiming outstanding success when these products are used are false. My recommendation is don’t waste your 90 bucks on any of these scams as they will not repair your computer. They are designed to take advantage of our gullible nature in a time of weakness and need.
Take your computer to a professional.
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