WinXP Manager: The comprehensive Windows XP maintenance suite

There are very few softwares available like the one I'm going to mention today - the WinXP Manager. WinXP Manager isn't just one software, it's many. It has a bunch of tools that helps you optimize, tweak and clean up your Windows XP.



When you open the program you will find the tools categorized into 7 major groups - Information, Optimizer, Cleaner, Customization, Security, Network and Misc Utilities.

The Information sections give you a comprehensive report of your whole computer, both hardware and the operating system. It has a Process Manager that shows you all the running processes, memory usage of each process, the PID and some other information. It also has an Optimization wizard that takes you through 10 steps to fully optimizes your system including adjusting your monitors refresh rates.

The Optimizer has five tools - Speed System, Service Manager, Multimedia, Startup Manager and System Repair.

The Speed System has four components that take care of your system's setting affecting running speed (turning off Indexing Service, disable Dr. Watson, unload DLLs from memory and more), RAM and Disk Cache, Startup Speed and Shutdown Speed. The Service Manager is similar to Process Manager the only difference is that it works with system services instead of processes and threads. The Multimedia tool has three components that handle multimedia devices, DirectDraw and Direct3D setting, and Media Player settings.

The Startup Manager and the System Repair are the last tools to be found inside the Optimizer menu. The first one doesn't need any comment, while the latter can repair hardware, system and file association issues.

The Cleaner section has a Registry cleaner, a Junk file cleaner, Unnecessary file cleaner and an Uninstaller. I would like to mention here that the junk file cleaner is the best that I have ever used. It is able to clean files that are often overlooked and missed by other popular junk file cleaners like CCleaner.

The Customization section has context menu tweaker, wallpaper changer and other tweaking utilities. There is also an Icon Manager which is an excellent component that lets you change your system's icons and repair icon related errors

The Security area has a lot of useful features, including access restriction to Control Panel or some of its applets only and, of course, custom programs, a file shredder and encryptor, a tracks removal tool and many more. You don't have parental control filtering for Web sites, but you can disallow access to the browser for your kids, or ban unwanted sites using the hosts file in the next area.

The Network menu has three tools taking care of your network settings, with excellent network acceleration and tweaking features, Outlook Express backup and tweaking options or the outstanding IE Manager.

The Miscellaneous Utilities is like a universal store where you can find almost anything that has been missed so far. The Windows Utilities opens an external window containing three tabs filled with tools built into your operating system, like Dr. Watson, Magnifier, NetMeeting, Remote Desktop Connection, Indexing Service and many, many more.

WinXP Manager is a great program. With more than 30 utilities built into it, it's the ultimate Swiss Army Knife. As a user of this program for more than two users, I highly recommend this program to you.

Price: $39.95. But a 15 day trial is available for download.

WinXP Manager homepage