I have to admit, upon first glance I was quite impressed – it looks the part and it says it’s been developed by ‘a Microsoft Partner’. It also states that “We highly recommend this download" although to be fair it probably goes without saying that if you’re the developer of a download then of course you highly recommend it! However look a little closer and you’ll see that despite it looking like the real deal, PC Health Boost is not an actual Microsoft product, although you could be forgiven for thinking it is.
This put me on my guard and I have to admit that I am not a huge fan of registry cleaners anyway because they often actually damage your computer instead of cleaning it as they claim. Besides, it's not free, costs about $30. A small price to pay for having a clean computer you might think; well it’s not such a great deal when you consider that there are plenty of free programs out there that do a good as, if not better job than these sorts of registry cleaners.
As the software is a registry cleaner this means that once you’ve installed it it will then scan your PC for ‘problems’. And guess what – it will tell you that you have literally hundreds of issues which, naturally, the full program which you need to purchase, will be able to take care of.
I was intrigued however and decided to test it using an old PC that I don’t use anymore. I first ran two other reputable cleaning software programs before installing PC HealthBoost so I could be pretty sure that my computer was problem free. I then ran PC Health Boost which told me that my computer had a whopping total of 54 issues. Not that bad after all. I was hoping to find at least 100+ issues.
I looked a little closer at these ‘issues’ and worked out how they were unearthed.
PC Health Boost works by searching for run lists which are lists that you’ve recently opened in the different software programs installed on your PC. If you move a file in one of these programs, this counts as an ‘error’. Like most people I use a number of programs that create files and I move them on my computer to make it easier to find and use them. So really, this is not an error, it’s simply an out of date ‘to-do list’. It also adds so-called issues with programs such as Microsoft Visual Studio 8 and Microsoft SQL, which you or I don’t use but they work in conjunction with other programs. It’s not a good idea to mess around with these as you could cause issues which is exactly why I don’t like registry cleaners because they can do untold damage by fixing what they perceive as a problem – when no such thing exists.
To conclude, despite the use of the words ‘healt’ and ‘boost’ in the name, PC Health Boost is a simple registry cleaner; it doesn’t ‘boost’ anything and it won’t speed anything up – and it might delete files that you need and cause real issues. If you’re concerned about malware, bugs and issues on your PC you are far better off downloading a well-known cleaner from the internet.
You’ve installed PC Health Boost and are worried it might cause problems? Uninstall it by going to your Start menu, go to All Programs, locate the PC Health Boost icon and click Uninstall. After that you may want to run a regular cleaner to make sure there’s nothing nasty lurking on your PC’s registry, etc. Very often, it comes bundled with adware and other unwanted applications, for instance, Search Conduit, so there's a good chance you got some of these as well.
Written by Michael Kaur, http://deletemalware.blogspot.com
PC Health Boost removal instructions:
1. First of all, download recommended anti-malware software and run a full system scan. It will detect and remove related adware and spyware from your computer. You may then follow the manual removal instructions below to remove the leftover traces of PC Health Boost and related adware. Hopefully you won't have to do that.
2. Remove PC Health Boost application from your computer using the Add/Remove Programs control panel (Windows XP) or Uninstall a program control panel (Windows 7 and Windows 8).
Go to the Start Menu. Select Control Panel → Add/Remove Programs.
If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, select Control Panel → Uninstall a Program.
If you are using Windows 8, simply drag your mouse pointer to the right edge of the screen, select Search from the list and search for "control panel".
Or you can right-click on a bottom left hot corner (formerly known as the Start button) and select Control panel from there.
3. When the Add/Remove Programs or the Uninstall a Program screen is displayed, scroll through the list of currently installed programs and remove PC Health Boost.
If you are using Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8, click Uninstall up near the top of that window. When you're done, please close the Control Panel screen.
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