Since the recession took hold around 2007 there was a decrease in the number of people upgrading their hardware/operating system. In parallel, the increase in PC maintenance software demand for earlier systems, especially Windows XP, has steadily increased in order to maintain and repair these systems. This Reimage review showcases one solution that is keeping XP secure, stable and viable for general use.
Even before 2006 there were a number of factors that were keeping Windows XP popular.
- Regular service packs made is secure, stable and perform well.
- RAM costs for older PCs were decreasing making it cheap to upgrade older PCs rather than buy new ones.
- PCs from 2000 – 2005 were already fast enough for the majority of users.
- Vista was a public relations nightmare that put off many XP users from upgrading.
The outcome has been a burgeoning support industry. Reimage software had focused early on in providing and XP repair application that could run online from a browser. The idea was that the application could scan for faults then download any repairs to the faulty machine.
The interesting approach was that the tool fixed both file system (application and operating system) and registry faults. A repository of 20 millions system/application files were amassed for repairing XP machines (overwriting faulty/missing files). Registry repairs used a knowledge base of healthy system configuration setting to reset keys.
The range of faults that it fixes include blue screen exceptions, registry corruption, damage due to virus/trojan attacks and simple things like a slow running PC.
It is still going to be good practice to keep up your own scheduled maintenance activities, getting updates to Windows/anti-virus software, cleaning out old unused applications, etc.
Running your own maintenance will prolong how long XP will remain at least until the point where Microsoft/software vendors stop supporting it. Tools like Reimage then become handy repair tools with XP for those times when software updates and your own attempts at manual repairs don’t succeed.
Related Reviews:
[...] you enjoyed reading this Reimage review, then be sure to check out our other articles on PC maintenance software [...]