Ashampoo PowerUp XP Platinum 1.0

• Quick specs
• Price: Free to try (30-day trial); $49.99 to buy (Buy it now)
• Operating system: Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows 2000
• Date added: April 15, 2004
• Total Downloads: 853,811
• Downloads last week: 305
• See full specifications

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A newer version of Ashampoo PowerUp XP Platinum is available.

Download the latest version | Learn more about Ashampoo PowerUp 3 3.23

(Download doesn't provide access to previous versions of this program.)

CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET Staff

Along with necessary support for Windows Vista, Version 3 of Ashampoo PowerUp sports a new look and adds useful features such as automatic backups for restoring previous configurations and a Risk Level Monitor that displays the potential dangers of certain tweaks. It's not perfect, but a well-designed interface that logically organizes PC settings, strong performance, and a very extensive list of customization options help earn the product a top rating.

The Windows tweaks available in Ashampoo PowerUp are too numerous to list, but if you've ever wanted to customize the number of rows in your Alt Tab panel, turn off autostart for disc drives and portable devices, remove your username from the Start menu, or disable sending error reports in Office 2007, you're covered. The interface is divided into six main sections: Home, for system overview, backups, and preferences; Optimize, for fine-tuning your system, drives, network, and software programs; Clean Up, for cleaning your Registry and securely deleting files; Customize, for a wide range of tweaks for your desktop, Windows Explorer, icons, and more; Manage, for handling your AutoStart options, Windows Services, and running processes; and Information, which includes details about your PC configuration.

Under the Home -> Assistant tab, there is a helpful new Profiles option that lets you set your PC for Performance, Security, or a balance of the two. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any way to save our own customized profiles, which would be very useful for computers with more than one user. The new backup feature is logical and worked great. The new benchmarking features are interesting for comparing your PC setup with other configurations, but the final score would benefit with a bit more explanation.

We occasionally saw German dialog boxes ("Ja" or "Nein") when making tweaks with PowerUp 3, but there were no major stability problems, and resource usage was respectable. The trial alone offers full functionality for 10 days; registering for a free Ashampoo account adds an extra 30 days. That's a minor annoyance when compared with the generous 40-day evaluation period. We still highly recommend Ashampoo PowerUp for Windows users.

Publisher's description

This convenient tool for fine-tuning your Windows NT4, 2000, 2003 server, and XP configurations gives you direct access to many frequently required settings and parameters, enabling you to make your operating system behave the way you want it to. Some of the settings you can change with PowerUp XP Platinum are available in Windows, but you will find that accessing them in PowerUp XP Platinum is much quicker and more convenient because they're available in a single location, with the same intuitive procedure for changing the parameters. New in the Platinum edition are Tuning Assistent, a safe, comprehensive system-tuning feature requiring just a few mouse clicks; more configuration options for blocking attachments in Microsoft Outlook XP; and the ability to disable the Windows XP function that checks whether you're online (Regdone), to remove Windows Messenger, to activate IDE UDMA 66 mode for faster performance with Intel chipsets, and to optimize your virtual memory.

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