by Nancy Ward
Advertised as “a complete toolchest of Windows power-tools”, Nuts & Bolts has four main groups: Repair and Recover, Clean and Optimize, Prevent and Protect and Secure and Manage.
Repair and Recover
Before installing the upgrade (available from the Helix website) Discover Pro reported my AMD K6 CPU as an AMD 586 Model 6 MMX 536MHz and Diagnostics reported serious memory problems that took over two hours to test. After installing the upgrade the CPU was recognized correctly and most of the memory problems disappeared. Before the upgrade N&B reported 80 errors in L1 Cache but only four errors after.
Before the upgrade, I clicked on the Summary button to get a report of the memory errors. Not exactly a bug, but definitely a “gotcha!” is the Summary button. The dictionary defines summary as “a brief report that tells the main points in a few words” of the information gathered. Not so with Nuts & Bolts; summary means back to the Discover Pro window.
Diagnostics said the HD failed the tests on the computer. Disk Minder reported an error, but failed to identify it. After carefully checking each option the following message appeared. “A critical error is in the partition table; this hard drive has 237, 888 bytes of unassigned disk space,” I was told. Choosing options of Auto Fix and Partition Tables warned of dire consequences if the partition tables changed. Sigh, guess I’ll just let that 237 KB remain unassigned.
Image/Restore makes an image of critical hard drive files and allows you to restore if need be. Rescue disk creates a floppy boot disk. Included in the latest update is an unformat command.
Clean and Optimize
Cleanup Wizard found many unnecessary files. Activating Shredder removed them permanently.
Disk Tune took only 20 minutes to defrag and consolidate the free space on my hard drive. While working, it gives information on how many Kb are left to be moved, as well as percentage of completion and how long it’s been working. The Shortcut Wizard rem oves inactive shortcuts from the desktop.
Registry Wizard cleans, backs up and tunes the Registry. Once networked, the work machine had some leftover files. After manually cleaning the Registry, the Wizard found five more leftovers, which were removed using Registry Pro.
Prevent and Protect
Shortly after the first installation the computer crashed (that infamous blue screen). Bomb Shelter sat there, never moving a muscle to help me recover. Not even the default three finger salute (control, alt, delete) would work. I’ve since had several mo re crashes while using Nuts & Bolts; however, Bomb Shelter hasn’t helped me recover from any of them.
WinGauge (shows what’s going on with the system) is loaded onto the desktop at startup.
Trash Guard is a pack rat. The intent is to prevent accidental deletion, but if left at default, you’ll soon find an overflowing recycle bin.
Secure and Manage
EZ Setup will make Tweak UI obsolete and is easier to use. Stronghold is an encryption and decryption file and Zip Manager is yet another zip utility. Launch Pad (just click to launch a utility) loads onto the desktop at startup.
The Verdict
Although not quite all the bugs are gone, Nuts & Bolts is still a program I would recommend for intermediate to experienced computer users, but not for the novice.
Nuts & Bolts Minimum requirements: a 386 SX, DOS 3.1 (3.3 for OS/2), Windows 3.x or 95, 4 MB RAM (8 recommended), one 3.5” drive, a CD and 15 MB hard drive space. For more info go to http://www.helixsoftware.com.
Nancy Ward is a HAL-PC member who can be contacted at nward@hal-pc.org.
E-mail me at webmaster@hal-pc.org with any comments you have and tell me what you want to see here.