Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
July 22, 2007

XP Repair Pro is a Windows registry scanner, cleaner, repair, editor and optimizer tool that I've been using for about a year and a half. I've written about it a few times and have a review of XP Repair Pro 2006 elsewhere on my Terry's Computer Tips site.

Product: XP Repair Pro
Class: Utility — Windows Registry — Scan for & Repair Errors
License: Commercial product.
Version Reviewed: XP Repair Pro 2007, v3.5.5

There are a lot of things that I like about XP Repair Pro. It's home-user-friendly license is definitely one of them. One license covers your home PC's that are not used for commercial purposes (I have a license for my business notebook and another license for the non-commercial computers at home.)

I realized that I hadn't updated to the XP Repair Pro 2007 version yet, despite having bought the Lifetime XP Repair Pro Upgrades option, so I did that recently. I also hadn't run XP Repair Pro for a couple months, so that gave me an opportunity to see what the new version could find...

XP Repair Pro 2007 - The Main Screens

First, let's take a look at the simplified interface and the things that XP Repair Pro can do...

The main screen, the default screen, is the Registry Repair screen in XP Repair Pro 2007. Here, we select the types of errors that we wish XP Repair Pro to find. It's also where we find he small, tabbed report interface where we'll learn aout the errors that XP Repair Pro has found.

The next screen is the System Optimizer display. In this part of the tool, XP Repair Pro sofrts and defragments the Windows Registry. Normal defragmentation tools like the Windows XP Disk Defragmnenter leave the Registry alone.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

The next screen is the Registry Editor. This looks very similar to the standard Windows Registry Editor "regedit", and may actually use Microsoft's entrypoints in .Net Framework 2.0 to provide much of this function. Anyway, the features are here and much easier to access than via regedit.

The System Backup screen is a little of a misnomer. It won't let you back up your files or do an image backup of your computer. It's designed as a backup and restore tool to back up the settings that XP Repair Pro might change — and to restore from that backup. It also gives you an easy access to the System Restore function and Restore Points in Windows.

(click on the image for a larger version)

(click on the image for a larger version)

The Preferences screen lets you select, or unselect, XP Repair Pro features such as automatic scanning and running in background. You can also have the program automatically create Backup Points and System Restore Points (XP and Above). By the way, since Backup Points are relatively small, I'm having it make both.

(click on the image for a larger version)

Let's see what XP Repair Pro 2007 was able to find on my notebook...

XP Repair Pro 2007 - Results

The Registry Repair results screen in XP Repair Pro is the same screen as the pre-scan version, but it now shows the number of errors found, the number ignored (we can choose to ignore specific errors if we don't want XP Repair Pro to fix them) and the number of Windows Registry nodes (data points) that it scanned. In the screen below, we can see that XP Repair Pro found 916 errors in total when I scanned this computer.

(click on the image for a larger version)

For the details, I'm showing on only the results part of the same image (for each category), since the rest of the windows doesn't change. The most common type of error in the Registry is that a Registry entry links to a file that no longer exists.

XP Repair Pro found 77 errors among he ActiveX, DLL (dynamic link library) and COM (common object model) entries in the registry.

It found 4 errors in the Add/Remove Program Entries list.

Recently Used Shortcuts had 134 errors. Windows XP eventually fixes these routinely (we hope) but this gets rid of them now.

There were 37 errors among the File Types and Extensions that Windows was supposed to recognize.

XP Repair Pro found 83 errors among the Registry entries for Shared Files.

Application Paths, referenced in the Registry, only had one error.

There were 54 errors in the Registry entries for font files and another 34 errors for Help files listed in the Registry.

It looks like I missed getting the screenprint of the "Registry Deep Scan" errors.

All the categories add up to the 916 errors (shown in the first image shown in the results), so XP Repair Pro found 492 errors in its deep scan of the Registry.

XP Repair Pro 2007 - My Conclusion

After upgrading to XP Repair Pro 2007 (for free, since I bought the Lifetime Upgrade Option for my business computer), I was very pleased with the new cleaner, less-confusing interface. The new backup option is an added benefit for XP and Vista users, as well as providing critical backup and restore features for the Registry for earlier versions of Windows. You can have XP Repair Pro 2007 "ignore" any of the individual errors that you choose not to be fixed. If you find you have a problem (you "fixed" something that was not broken, and broke it!), you can restore from the backup or the system restore point (XP & Vista).

You can download and scan your own computer for free to see what XP Repair Pro will find. XP Repair Pro will tell you what it found, if you want to make the fixes manually. If you want XP Repair Pro to make the repairs for you, you will have to purchase a license.

As I write this, you can purchase XP Repair Pro 2007 for $36.95. The web site notes that this is a sale price and that they've been extending the sale for a while — you can roll the dice and hope that the sale continues to get extended, or buy it now at the sale price. I just bought my home license and chose to add the Lifetime XP Repair Pro Upgrades for $12.95, as I had done for my business computer. If you don't buy the Lifetime Upgrades option, you get free updates for six months. XP Repair Pro 2007 has a 60-day money-back satisfaction guarantee.

By the way, you can get a great deal on their Windows and web browser privacy program XP Privacy Pro, if you buy it at the same time... I was so intent on getting the license for XP Repair Pro for my home machines that I forgot this deal. I wish it had been checked by default so that I would have paid more attention...

Buy XP Repair Pro 2007 here

2.  Updates Last Week

Microsoft (operating systems, email, web browser, office suites):
Microsoft releases almost all updates once per month, on the second Tuesday. This week did not include Patch Tuesday.

Firefox (web browser, http://www.mozilla.com, free):
Versions 2.0.0.5 was released on July 17, 2007. This was a security update.

Firefox is free!

Opera (web browser, http://www.opera.com, free):
New Update! Version 9.22 was released on July 19th. This release of a recommended security upgrade, in addition to having several other changes and bug fixes.

Netscape (web browser, http://browser.netscape.com, free):
Version 9.0b2 (beta version) was released this week.

SeaMonkey (web browser, email, HTML editor, newsreader; http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey; free): New Versions! Version 1.1.3 was released during the week ending July 21st. This was primarily a security update.

Eudora (email, http://www.eudora.com):
No update last week. Version 7.1.0.9 was released October 11, 2006. Eudora is now free, with no ads and no "paid mode" option.

Sponsored mode in the earlier versions expired on March 31st — and reverted to the less-functional "Lite" mode. Fortunately, Eudora is very nicely designed. Just upgrade to v7.1.0.9 to get back to Sponsored mode.

Mozilla Thunderbird (email, http://www.mozilla.com/thunderbird, free):
New Version! Thunderbird version 2.0.0.5 was released on July 19, 2007. Version 2.0.0.5 is primarily a security update.

OpenOffice (office suite — spreadsheet, word processor, presentations, graphics, web design; http://www.openoffice.org; free): Version 2.2.1 was released during the week ending June 16th. This is a security fix and bug fix release, with no new features.

3.  Accessing Your Computer's BIOS Setup

Sometimes, we need to get into the BIOS Setup Utility that's built into our computers.

The BIOS, the Basic Input-Output System, is the chip that controls how your computer talks to many peripheral devices, like keyboards. It controls which drive attempts to boot first, second, and so forth. It even enables some users to do a lot of fine tuning to their computers (most computer manufacturers allow some on-or-off choices, but many motherboard manufacturers have extensive customization options available for their users.

BIOS settings are stored in a special type of memory called the CMOS, which has power from the battery on the motherboard. This power enables the CMOS to remember settings, even if you turn unplug your computer!

For most people, there are three times when we want to get into the BIOS to change some of the settings in the computer.

If you replace the battery on your motherboard, you'll have to get into the BIOS Settings Utility to set the date, time and reset any other settings that you might have changed. Some motherboards have multiple remembered settings, such as a default, a safe set of settings (one that should work), an aggressive set of settings (one that may not work, depending on how good your individual CPU and memory chips are).

Another time we need to access the BIOS settings utility is when we want to change the order of the drives when booting. Many people like to leave a CDROM for a game or program in their CDROM drive or DVD drive. But, by default, the computer will try to boot from that CDROM, find that it can't, and then will boot the hard drive. By using the BIOS setting utility, we can make the cmputer boot faster by telling it to boot from the hard drive before trying the CDROM.

Of course, the other main time we need to access the BIOS setting utility is when we want to change the boot order so we can boot from a CDROM again.

So, the big question is: If I've forgotten how to get into the BIOS Setup Utility (or if I never knew), how do I find out which key is the right one?

A quick Google search for "BIOS key", without the quotation marks, turned up this fantastic page How to access/enter Motherboard BIOS. This page will tell you the BIOS setup keys for many different computer manufacturers.

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4.  CounterSpy V2.5 Released by Sunbelt

Sunbelt Software, the makers of the CounterSpy anti-spyware and Sunbelt Personal Firewall that I use, released version 2.5 CounterSpy several weeks ago.

When I updated to Version 2.0, I saw a big improvement over the earlier versions because it took less memory and was less noticeable when it was running — unless it found something, of course.

Version 2.5 seems to be as much of a positive change again. I started a scan earlier today on my notebook while I was web surfing and doing email. Although the hard drive light was merrily blinking, that was the only thing that indicated that Counterspy v2.5 was scanning my hard drive — the computer remained responsive.

Sunbelt offers a free, fully-functional 15-day trial of CounterSpy v2.5, so you can try it without buying it.

 

Part 1  | Part 2

Volume 3, Number 6 — Sunday, July 22, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.

 

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