Tweaking Utility 2.2

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• Quick specs
• Price: Free to try (14-day trial); $39.95 to buy
• Operating system: Windows 95, Windows XP
• Date added: January 20, 2009
• Total Downloads: 304,849
• Downloads last week: 571
• See full specifications

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CNET editors' review

Reviewed by: CNET staff on June 05, 2009

TweakXP occupies a strange position between useful personal utility and IT department crackdown. Power users and those managing multiple profiles or users will appreciate the granularity of the options, but for everyone else, this application may be overkill.

This tool manages settings for all of the options you would find in Microsoft's own interface tweaking capabilities, such as mouse speed, desktop icons, print sharing, and so forth. Then it throws in dozens of additional ones from Group Policy manager, Services manager, and beyond. This may make sense if your roommate regularly uses your computer or you are starting an Internet cafe on the side, but as a personal utility, TweakXP can be overwhelming. The awkwardness of the interface does not help matters. The left-hand navigation, for example, offered 10 menus that bounced up and down as we opened and closed them, putting us on constant anxiety as to where that Active Desktop submenu went. The TweakXP window cannot be resized, which makes scrolling through some option trees interminable.

On the positive side, TweakXP does include a reasonable 14-day trial, and a useful Help file as well as a description field explaining each of the many settings it manages. Moreover, the ability to password-protect the tool and import/export settings makes this tool an option for IT support technicians. If you are a casual user simply looking for more ways to adjust your personal Windows experience, this application is probably not the right one for you. But if you frequently change Microsoft Management Console settings, TweakXP is worth a look.

Publisher's description

This utility is for any serious Windows tweaker. Change hundreds of Registry settings in Windows XP, improving appearance, performance, and functionality. Prevent others from changing your settings, locking down Control Panel applets and Internet Explorer options, even choosing which applications can or can't run on the computer. You can change Windows XP's performance by selecting to keep the core system in memory and not paged to disk (advisable only if you have 512MB RAM or greater).

You also can optimize the CPU and memory usage for programs, the system cache, or background services. Version 2.2 fixes the bug with time expiration.

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