Last updated in 2017
(October, 2018: This review is in the process of being updated, but all the links are currently valid)
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro (ASC Pro) is a program suite you can use to speed up your PC, scan for malicious items, protect yourself when visiting websites in a browser, shred files, and tons of other related things.
Below is my review of Advanced SystemCare Pro version 10. You can find what each screen of the program is for, which tools are available, and my opinion on whether or not you should even buy this software (there's a free version available too).
Review version: 10.4
Current price: USD $19.99 (or $14.99 with the coupon code mentioned below)
Supported operating systems: Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP
Purchase link: Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro (1 year subscription, 3 PCs)
Free version available: Advanced SystemCare 10 Free
Important Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro Features
There are so many tools and functions in this program that it's hard to have anything bad to say about it:Pros:
- Optimizes a slow computer
- Includes dozens of tools
- Clears up disk space
- Can defrag the registry and hard drive
- Scans for malware
- Removes private browser data
- Can boost your internet connection
- Fixes invalid shortcuts and deletes empty folders
- Finds large files that you can delete to free up space
- Searches for duplicate files that contribute to used disk space
- Can repair hard drive errors
- It's easy to change default programs
- Undeletes files you've already removed
- Will update automatically when necessary
- Includes a memory/RAM cleaner
- Can shutdown, reboot, sleep, or hibernate the PC on a schedule
- It's easy to shutdown unwanted or unused background processes
- A rescue center lets you restore backed up registry and other data
- Can be used as a portable program
Cons:
- Might be overwhelming since there are so many options and tools
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro Newest Updates
- Expanded database of Spyware Removal protects your PC against WannaCry 2.0 and EternalRocks attacks proactively.
- Added the cleaning for WhatsApp, Chrome 58.0, Firefox 53.0, Opera 45.0, Camtasia Studio 9.0, and Adobe Air 25.0 etc. Strengthened the cleaning for Chrome Cookies and Dropbox.
- Optimized scanning algorithms of Registry Clean to scan registry deeper and faster for better system performance.
- Expanded database of Surfing Protection & Ads Removal provides more secure surfing environment without annoying ads.
- Improved FaceID provides troubleshooting tips for camera connection problems.
- Software Updater supports updating Firefox 64-bit.
- Optimized Game Mode brings you much smoother gaming experience.
- Improved multiple languages.
- Fixed all known bugs.
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro Screenshots
There are five major tabs in the program that separate the different features. Below is a look at each of those areas.
Speed Up
The Speed Up screen is of course where ASC Pro lets you use those appropriate tools. You can turn on Turbo Boost to automatically free up memory that could be clogged by unnecessary background processes, Windows services, or non-Windows services
You can choose a type of turbo boost mode between Work, Game, and Economy mode, each with their own purpose. For example, Game Mode boosts the computer's performance for gaming by shutting down services that aren't necessary for video games, while Economy Mode extends battery life (if on a laptop) while still attempting to keep performance at a reasonable level.
Just choose what you want disabled from the lists in their relevant categories, and then click Boost to terminate them. Note that this does not delete the services but just shuts them down to free up system resources that could be hampering performance.
The Hardware Accelerate screen you see a few pictures up just opens Driver Booster (if you have it installed) so that you can manage your device drivers. Old, missing, or corrupt drivers could contribute to a slow or buggy computer.
Deep Optimization is the next area of the Speed Up tab, and will make little changes to various things in an effort to speed up your overall computer. In the shot above, it says that 15 items could be optimized. Here's a screenshot of those settings when you press Details:
As you can see in this shot, Advanced SystemCare Pro can disable remote registry modification. It's doubtful you'll use this anyway, so disabling it could speed things up even a little. When you consider that, in this example, there are 15 things that could be changed, you might notice a performance boost if you optimize everything ASC recommends.
You can of course uncheck any of these items if you don't want to make those changes.
The App/Toolbar Cleaner in the Speed Up tab opens IObit Uninstaller to help you remove unwanted plugins and toolbars that you might have installed in your browsers. It's really just a scanner that shows the ones you have installed and makes it easy to remove them.
This area of ASC Pro is helpful if you didn't know you had those plugins and/or toolbars installed but your browser is buggy or slow. Removing them might help.
Protect
In the Protect tab of Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro is where you can control how the program protects you from browsing malicious websites, spyware, unauthorized computer access, browser advertisements, browser tracking, and more.
As you can see above, you can easily disable any of those options. The first one, FaceID, can show you who tried to access your computer when you were away, so it of course requires a webcam. The Surfing Protection & Ads Removal option prompts you to install a Chrome browser extension.
Clean & Optimize
This tab is probably where most people will find the most benefit with using Advanced SystemCare. It will scan all sorts of things that contribute to a slow or vulnerable computer, to remove unnecessary startup items, privacy traces like your browsing history, invalid registry entries, junk files that are leftover after program installs, spyware issues, registry fragments, and more.
As you can see in the screenshot, you can even tell ASC Pro to automatically fix the problems once they're found. So really, all you have to do is start the scan and mark that option to have them fixed for you, and you can walk away and come back to a much cleaner PC.
One thing that's really nice about the way the program scans is that if one particular thing is taking too long to finish, like when scanning for disk errors (which is usually a slow process), you can click Skip to jump over it and move on to the next step without messing up anything else.
Since ASC scans browsers too, it's exceptionally nice that it doesn't automatically close down the browser to clean it up. For some areas of a browser to be cleaned requires that it be shut down, but you'll be asked if you want to do that.
When the scan is finished, you'll be given a very organized list of any issues that were found, and you have total control of what you delete. You can uncheck any of these areas before fixing the rest:
In some areas of the scan, like Startup items, you can see that the checkmark isn't in the little bubble to the left. That's because not everything it scanned is selected to be fixed. ASC is smart enough to choose what it thinks needs optimized without touching other things that you might use.
For example, on my computer, the scan found some programs that I often use that start up with my computer. ASC didn't mark those to be disabled because it assumes I'm using those every day.
However, it did delete things that it knows I don't need to have running all the time, such as a Microsoft OneNote update task and some strange, unknown items that I couldn't even identify but that were probably using up memory and processor power.
Toolbox
This screen of Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro is quite a mix of tools, hence the name. The first is full of other IObit products that are installed as separate programs, and the rest are for optimization, security, repair, and system cleaning.
Most of these programs are tools that have to be downloaded inside ASC. Just click them to install their components, and then you can click them again to actually open them.
Smart RAM is a nice tool included here that lets you instantly clear up memory; it can run all the time and works with just a click away.
PCtransfer makes it really easy to back up important files and folders and then restore them onto a new computer.
The Clone Files Scanner tool will scan your hard drive for duplicate files and let you easily delete the copies to free up disk space. The same is true for finding large files with Large Files Finder.
Use Default Program to change your default browser, image viewer, audio player, file compressor, and other kinds of software.
You can even defrag the Windows registry with ASC Pro, using the IObit Registry Defrag tool.
Action Center
This screen just shows you some other IObit software you might be interested in buying.
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro ($19.99, or $14.99 with the ASC11TNLPLANET coupon code)
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro Settings
There are lots of settings you can change in this program. One is just called Quick Settings, and lets you enable or disable various things, such as deep cleaning or the auto-update feature that will download program updates on an as-needed basis.
The actual settings screen (not the quick settings) looks like this, and lets you make minute changes to all sorts of options:
As you can see, you can make the program start when Windows starts and change which options are available from the context menu when you right-click folders, files, and hard drives.
If you're running a different antivirus program, you might want to disable the one here in ASC, which can be done by disabling the Real-time Protector option in that area of the settings.
Another specific setting that you might be interested in altering is the browser anti-tracking option that cleans privacy traces when you close your browser. You can disable it altogether or just remove it for certain browsers, or even certain areas within the browser. In other words, you can disable browser anti-tracking for just Chrome's history and cache, for example, and not Internet Explorer's or Firefox's.
If you use the Auto RAM Clean option, you can go into those settings to see a history of how much RAM was cleared the last times you used it. On my computer, for example, the last four entries show that 274 MB, 159 MB, 221 MB, and 1,080 MB was cleaned, which is pretty remarkable.
An important area for advanced users is the Ignore List setting, You can go here to stop ignoring items you've said you wanted to ignore. Anything ignored will go here, so you can remove those entries that have to do with the registry cleaner, system optimizer, spyware removal, etc.
Conclusion
I have been using Advanced SystemCare Pro for a while, and version 10 is just as good as the last ones. If you're not satisfied with the free version, I highly recommend you buy this recent version; use the coupon code to get a big discount.
Otherwise, if you're in need of a free program to clean up your computer, try CCleaner, Baidu Cleaner, or Wise Disk Cleaner. They don't have as many options but they're also 100% free.
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro ($19.99, or $14.99 with the ASC11TNLPLANET coupon code)
Advanced SystemCare 11 Pro ($19.99, or $14.99 with the ASC11TNLPLANET coupon code)