System Tweaks

System Tweaks is an intuitive application that enables users to boost the performance of their system and make some tweaks, in accordance with their preferences. It comprises a few modules which revolve around customization, maintenance, cleaning, protection and utilities.

The GUI of this tool is nothing out of the ordinary but simple to work with, as the above mentioned components are neatly organized in tabs.

Starting with the Customization mode, System Tweaks lets you adjust the Start menu delay, disable Recent Documents history or clear it on exit, as well as hide the Search or Run tools, among others.

It is also possible to configure Control Panel (e.g. disable access, add Registry Editor) or hide Control Panel applets (e.g. Display, Add or Remove Programs), make some adjustments to the desktop (e.g. disable Active Desktop, enable automatic screen refresh), hide pages in the Display dialog, as well as tweak Explorer options (e.g. show hidden files and folders).

The Maintenance module targets performance tweaks (e.g. enable boot defrag, enable Prefetcher, disable bootup error messages), visual effects (e.g. maximum performance) and speed optimization (e.g. automatic updates, HTTP SSL).

System Tweaks is also capable of analyzing and cleaning data from the web browser and applications (e.g. cookies, Internet history, Windows log files), and you can save the results to a plain text document.

The system protection wizard scans your computer for any viruses, Trojans and spyware components, as well as checks damaged or irregular settings, which are usually caused by malware activity and improper use of system utilities. Unfortunately, you cannot configure this procedure.

Last but not least, the Utilities section provides an advanced Run tool that allows you to open an app and set its priority level and window state. It is possible to create virtual drives, copy, move and delete files in batch mode, as well as explore active processes. You can also protect System Tweaks with a password and make it automatically run at system startup.

To sum it up, the application comes packed with a bunch of interesting features: some can be found in Windows by default, while others offer alternative solutions to making OS adjustments. Unfortunately, System Tweaks has not been updated for a long time, thus it may cause stability issues on newer Windows platforms.