In January I reviewed iolo's System Mechanic 10 and, as you will remember, it rejuvenated my old XP machine like it had just swallowed a bottle of Geritol.

About a month ago, I noticed my PC began acting strange when running my web editor and photo gallery programs. It would run very slow and then lock up like there was a conflict between the two programs. Thinking there could have developed a defect in one or both of the software programs I re-installed both of them. The same problem persisted. At the time I was running a major competitor's Anti-Virus program with firewall and there was no detected viruses or malware. Nevertheless, the installed AV program displayed a warning on the main screen that the firewall was disabled, yet their icon on the status bar stated the firewall was on. Sill suspicious that it may be a virus but confused that it only affected these two programs, I also ran a full Malwarebytes scan and the system showed clean. Since I was getting two different readings on my firewall I began removing the AV program (a safe precaution, since two AV programs cannot run on the same PC simultaneously) and then installed Microsoft's Security Essentials; ran a full scan, but still found nothing and the problem persisted. Frustrated, since this only affected these two software programs and nothing else, I was resigned to trying to work around the problem until Don arrived and he suggested that since we had to do a review on iolo's System Shield, let's take it for a test drive to see if it detected a problem.

I installed iolo's System Shield, ran a quick update, then proceeded to do a full system scan expecting the result to come back negative. Instead it detected w32/MTWB.A.gen!ELDORADO, a downloader virus program and w32/DldrX.CKXS, a spyware program on my PC. Don and I both stared at each other in disbelief! Not one, but three major AV programs had not detected the virus and it had also infected the one firewall. As Forrest Gump said, "You never know what your gonna get in a box of chocolates!"

The ELDORADO virus is a virus that originally was installed by downloading a program called Photojoy promoted by a major e-mail software company and had long since been removed from my computer, or so I thought... System Shield then asked me if I wanted to remove the malware and then sent it to quarantine. I ran a second full scan (to be sure it was gone) with System Shield and then an in-depth scan with a fresh copy of Malware Bytes and both results came back clean. Both my HTML Editor and Photo Gallery software programs were now up and running perfectly.

Once again, iolo Technologies have come to my rescue. This time with System Shield. System Shield also has a nice feature that I like very much. It will detect when your PC is sitting idle and then run a quick scan. This eliminates conflicting with other programs when they are running. Although System Shield does not have it's own firewall, it works well with Windows firewall.

I have run System Shield for a month now and find it effective, efficient and hassle free. The other AV programs, that I had trusted, are now floating somewhere in the clouds. If you are in need of a good Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Protection software, or your current AV program is not pulling its weight, I highly recommend you visit iolo's web page listed below and take System Shield for a free trial spin.

You might be surprised at what you find in your 'box of chocolates'!