No, it's not useful in the least. From the screenshot on site, the
payware product appears to be yet another registry cleaner. Only this
one with a lot of stupid hype & claims to "Fix Windows problems."
I've nothing against registry cleaners; their results can be informative.
What is irresponsible is for this greedy company to hype that as "fixing
Windows problems." When it's the case is that for users on average, running
this kind of thing /creates/ problems, or does basically neutral acts (like
clearing old MRU lists etc) -- not fixes them.
As to the demoware product here -- which is designed simply to brag what
invalid items it might find, and then offer a buy-now link for one's next
step -- actually the results were surprising. It found a grand total of
two items on my system. A smarter registry cleaner such as the freeware
RegSeeker would find hundreds.
One was a leftover entry in the HKLM app paths, section. That which does
not matter, other than being clutter. And something about an invalid .lnk
on my startmenu or something. Hardly a "problem" for which I need
"MightyMax."
It refuses to shut down. It shoves its presence TSR mode into the systray,
and while the icon there does have a "close menu" action shown -- the
obnoxious thing ignores your request.
You have to pull out your process manager, and choose to kill task on
the process it has sneakily named "realtime.exe"
and doesn't have an uninstall that I can see.
It does not offer you a choice for where it installs. It drops a big mess
of its files into the windir.
realtime.exe pcboot.exe restart.exe dotest.exe pcdoc.exe
pcdoc.hlp pcdoc.bat pcdocbat.pif
Then into the sysdir, it both adds, and overwrites, vb type libraries
there. On my system (this will vary according to which of those vb libs
you already do or do not have registered), the install added 200+ (two
hundred) ugly new registry entries into the HKCR section of the registry.
Into the "Program Files" directory, it puts right at the very root level
there, an html page advertising its product plus its icon file. Then within
the "Program Files" directory, it makes a folder for itself, and in that,
you can find its uninstaller.
I don't run the uninstaller routines that come with programs. Just as
the installer routines are too many times irresponsible, so thereto are
their uninstallers. I made an exception, for this report.
I chose the option "default/automatic uninstall." The MightyMax uninstaller
!removed two of my standard shared system libraries.
comdlg32.ocx STDOLE2.TLB
I might not have had any problems before running this demo, but MightyMax
sure wanted to create them for me. I'd have had a lot of unhappy programs
if I'd not paid attention, and restored those two files from backup.
For those wondering the one detail: Yes, those two files have entries in
the shared dlls section, so the uninstaller had no excuse to delete them.
Even beyond that, it had no business touching them. Those files were in
my sysdir before the install. The installer had not added them. What it
had done was overwrite my copies, with the same version and size, with
its own mis-dated copies.
The other files the installer had added to my sysdir, it deleted those.
Msflxgrd.ocx Regobj.dll Shelllnk.tlb
If I'd had pre-existing copies of those files in my sysdir, then I suspect
the uninstaller of this program would have likewise deleted those, too.
That first library, I did used to keep it in my shared sysdir, as it is
pretty commonly used. So it would have been another one which I'd need to
have retrieved from backup. (In w98 we have to do this manually. For the
later Windows, I don't know if any of these are the protected files or not.)
Then there was the matter of all the registry entries in the HKCR. To be
able to recover form the registry mess this created, I used TUN. I took a
before snapshot, advance of touching the installer. Then after it was all
over, from the start point of the installer, and after the uninstaller, I
had TUN repair the damage.
TUN had a great deal to fix, in my HKCR section. There were a number of
keys that were created by the program's installer, and not removed by its
uninstaller. And too, there was the matter of a number of my pre-existing &
needed keys that the uninstaller had up and removed from my registry. [*]
One of the leftover registry entries that this program's nasty installer
did not bother to clean up. It's sneaky entry to itself, realtime.exe,
which it slid into the registry RUN section to stay haunting user at
every startup.
I've downloaded it but not installed it. You comment makes it unlikely that
I will,
Only a real demented type would install krap like this.
but I do a restore point (in XP) before installing anything.
That's one reason I took time to report. Not just to provide into that
MightyMax is bad. But as reminder about the need for protective measure
in advance of installing anything.
There's one remainder consequence that I got from the install-uninstall,
where my backups and TUN, etc, won't help me. This POS wiped out some
45% of my w9x system resources, without returning them. Forced now to
reboot.
--
Karen S.
_____________________
[*]
TOTAL UNINSTALL, ACTION REPORT
Restoral actions taken, to recover from the mess after the install-uninstall
of the MightyMax demo program.
[....]
< Originally, I'd pasted the whole thing here, for visual impact. But
fortunately I noticed in advance of send, that is was much too long for
inclusion in a news post (261 lines) So I moved it here instead,
http://www.redshift.com/~omega/2004/var/tun-restore.txt >
Lesson this represents: PRACTICE SAFE INSTALL
