Advanced System Care 18 Pro Review — Does It Actually Speed Up Your PC?

Advanced System Care claims to clean, speed up, and protect your Windows PC. But does it actually deliver? I test it on a real machine and give you an honest answer.

In this review I cover:
• What Advanced System Care 18 Pro actually does
• The scan and cleanup process in real time
• Performance before vs. after running a full scan
• Whether the Pro version is worth paying for vs. the free version
• Privacy concerns — what data does it access?
• Alternatives if this is not the right fit
• My honest verdict after testing

Good for: Windows users with older PCs, slow startup times, or junk file buildup.

Note: Results vary by system. This is my personal experience and review — not sponsored.

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Closed Caption:

Welcome back. On today's video, I wanted
to go over a software program that I use
very frequently on my computer called
Advanced System Care. And let's jump
right in. So, Advanced System Care, and
we're currently at version 18, is a
software that goes through your computer
system and deletes all of the cookies
that are unnecessary. It speeds up your
programs, checks for a lot of things
like um if you have outdated software,
if you have other issues, if you have
registry issues in Windows, and I've
been using it for a number of years. I
find that it works very well to clean my
computer to speed it up when it gets a
little bogged down. And it also helps
keep the RAM updated so you don't get a
bunch of junk just stuck in your RAM as
your computer's operating. So, if you
find that your computer is laggy, if you
find that it is just not performing as
well as it used to, this is something
that I recommend downloading. Now, they
do have a free version. You'll see that
I'm using the pro version. The free
version is great. It works fine. and I
used that for probably a decade and
finally did upgrade to the pro version
once they ran a special that was almost
too hard to beat. Um, the pro version
also comes with a driver booster. That
was actually the one that I bought. I
bought driver booster and I got pro for
free. And I found that it it has some
extra features. Will I buy it again? I'm
not sure. Depends on how I feel at the
end of the year. But let's go through a
couple of different things. So this is
the main screen of advanced system care.
You can come in here. You can click
scan. You can see you've got an AI mode
which does everything for you. where
you've got a manual mode which allows
you to come in here and click on
different settings. Now, the only real
setting that I will change is under
privacy sweep. And when you click on the
settings, the reason that I like to make
some changes here is I don't want it to
clear out my saved passwords. I may want
some saved form information to stick
around, but I do want to get rid of
different types of things. So, um for
example, in Internet Explorer, some for
some reason cookies was unchecked. I do
want most of the cookies to be gone, but
I don't want my saved passwords to be
cleared out if I'm using Internet
Explorer, Microsoft Edge, whatever it
may be. So that these are just different
things. You can come in here, check on
spyware removal, and you can have it
skip certain files. The reason this is
usually set to 10 megabits on the skip
files is because a spyware is not
usually going to be that large. You can,
of course, change that setting to
anything that you want. And you can
remove threats from recycle bin, which I
do want to do. I don't really want them
sticking around in the recycle bin where
they may accidentally be opened. And
enable full protection. You'll see that
is a pro option. Registry registry
clean. It'll talk about different files.
I'm not going to go through all of these
because most users are not that
knowledgeable. Um not no offense
intended on that, but just most people
don't necessarily know all of that and
this video would be very very very long
if we did go through all of those. Auto
RAM clean is kind of cool where it
actually will release different pieces
or different information that's stuck in
your RAM. Uh, for those who don't know,
this is just a quick tidbit. You have a
you have long-term memory and short-term
memory on it. And the RAM is the random
access memory. That is the short-term
memory. That's usually a little bit
smaller, but it's faster to access and
it's temporary, but unfortunately stuff
does get stuck in there. And you can see
that this frequently is releasing memory
from your RAM, and that will speed up
your computer's performance.
Uh, so what the other things you can do
is you can click on speed up and it'll
talk about different things on your
computer that you're able to change. You
can turn turbo boost on or off. This can
actually cause some issues with um
people's computer. So I wouldn't
necessarily use it unless you need to,
but you can experiment with it. Startup
optimizer. There's a lot of different
things that go into your startup
programs. And if you don't want them to
do it, you can click on optimize and
come in here and see what exactly is in
your startup items. You can see quick
optimization. You can see what items are
starting up as Windows starts up. You
can see these services that are running
behind the scenes. You can enable or
disable those. The cool thing here is it
gives you a disable rate and this shows
what percentage of advanced system care
users are disabling this and you can
have a you can select based on that
information or of course you can Google
it and see if that's something that you
want to remove. Schedule tasks. These
are tasks that are set by softwares on
your computer to run at different times
and you can disable those. And again,
you have that disable rate button. And
you have browser extensions. And if you
have a lot of browser extensions, you
may want to go through here and disable
them. You can see that I actually don't
have any currently running. I'm not a
huge fan of browser extensions
typically. Hardware accelerator helps
your computer speed up. Again, it
manages with the drivers with driver
booster. Driver booster is another one
of their softwares. And you have a bunch
of different options you can come in and
see. It's a pretty cool product there.
Protect. You can see that you have
different types of protections. You can
have your antivirus and and spyware. It
tells you if those are active or not. It
tells you if your privacy protection is
on or off. You have browser protection,
security and repair tools. And then the
software updater is a pretty cool one.
In older versions, I didn't find it to
work very well, but now it actually does
seem to work quite well. And you can see
that currently it's showing all of these
different softwares are up to date. Now,
this is not all the software I have on
my computer, but these are all the ones
that it is monitoring. And then under
action center, this is basically a sales
platform where they can tell you you
need to buy bye bye bye bye bye bye. So,
generally most users can come in here
and use the AI ai mode and be just fine.
If you want to use the manual mode, that
will work. You come here and click this
big blue button and it starts to run.
So, what it'll do is it goes through and
it scans all of the different files in
your system. It will scan for privacy
issues. Right now, it's scanning for
junk files and it'll give me an option
to delete those. You can see it's
popping up the file names right there as
it goes through the registry entries.
These are different programs that have
been registered with Windows. And when
you delete them, sometimes those
programs do not come out. So, this is
checking for all the registry entries,
making sure that everything's accurate.
So that when a software calls for
something in the Windows registry, it's
basically saying, hey, what's what's
going on in the um a table of contents
type thing or what's another analogy
would be some like a directory saying
this is the program. Here's where you
go. Here's where the files are located.
If it's inaccurate, then it has to go to
that and it'll the program will not be
able to open. It may say, well, we can't
find that software. Have you ever had
that happen? This is scanning for the
registry entries to find old ones, to
find inaccurate ones, figure out what's
happening and where where in
inaccuracies are. Internet improvements.
You can see it just found one internet
improvement. Different issues there.
Registry fragments. This is going
through for little pieces of code that
may have gone into the Windows registry
that are not necessary anymore. Disk
optimization. It's usually not going to
pick up on those unless you do a a deep
dive. But the way a disc works is it's
storing everything. Imagine a store
shelf where you have different boxes and
you go through and it's putting
everything in order. And when a lot of
people come through, um, imagine when
there's a storm or a hurricane or
something in your local grocery store,
the shelves are not stocked very
efficiently. Well, your hard drive gets
like that as well. Or your hard drive
will have things stored and then you'll
delete something and it doesn't
automatically compact it. So, your hard
drive will not be running very
efficiently. It has to go search all
these different sectors and try to find
what's going on. So, that's what the
disk optimization will do. But most of
the times this is not doing a deep dive.
So occasionally you'll want to do a deep
dive on your disc optimization or on
your own on your computer to make sure
that your discs are running the best
that they can. Anti virus, we all pretty
much know about that. A firewall is
checking to make sure that people cannot
access your computer from the internet.
Outdated drivers is checking to see if
everything's up to date. Outdated
software, same thing. And you're seeing
it's actually finding items here.
spyware threats. It'll go through your
computer and it you can set different
levels of depth on that to see how deep
it wants to go. The more in depth it
goes, the longer it takes. System
weaknesses, it's find just different
issues that may be in your system where
you haven't updated your Windows. Uh I
find that a lot of people don't even
know that they are supposed to update
Windows unfortunately and they don't.
And then security holes, it's finding if
there's some holes in your software or
issues that are major that need to be
checked. And it'll tell you, it'll give
you a little eye like that to tell you
that something needs to be changed. Disc
errors will tell you if there's a
problem with your disc. And then it
comes up and gives you this final item
that says, I've got 6.8 gigabytes of
file that need to be deleted or can be
deleted to clear up disk space, 617
items that would improve my PC's
performance, and seven items that would
be for security. Um, what I can do now
is I can come down here and click fix
and it's going through and doing all of
the items. Sometimes it'll tell you
specific action items that need to be
done. But you can see it runs pretty
quick on most of these softwares,
especially if you run it frequently. If
you don't run this for very long at all,
you will not it will take much much
longer. You can see on my updated
software, it is moving a little bit
slow. We're at 10% currently. So, it's
probably going to take here a couple of
minutes and it's going to go out to the
internet. It's going to download those
drivers from a trusted website, usually
a repository that's either from the
software manufacturer or from a computer
repository that is trusted. So, it's not
going to go out to a torrent site or
anything like that and download
something that would harm your computer.
Once that's updated, it's going to go
through the system weaknesses. It may
make us or tell us that we need to
restart the computer once we're done. It
really just depends on what it finds and
what the updates are and the other
programs that I have open currently
because yes, that will affect whether
your computer can just update itself or
whether it needs to be restarted.
Sometimes if you have a especially a
Windows product, if you have a Windows
product open, it's not able to update
the underlying code. If you can't shut
that down like Outlook or Word or just
Windows itself, if it can't shut the
program down because of other things
that are running, you do have to restart
your computer. So, I'm going to hit
pause. I will come back as soon as this
is done and we'll go from there. Okay,
so now we're at 99% finished. It should
wrap up here in just a second. It's
finishing up updating software. I had a
couple of pop-ups come up that said it
was updating things like I'll actually
show you here Windows Notepad. So, we're
going to go ahead and hit update that.
So, make sure you're watching the other
screens as they come up. Otherwise, it
will take a lot longer than what you're
expecting. Um, this did just close
Windows Notepad that I had up and I was
taking notes on it. So, be aware it will
do some of that. will close some of the
programs as you say update. Fortunately,
Windows Notepad is supposed to save
everything before it closes
automatically, which of course I will
find out here in a second. So, that's
something to keep an eye on when you're
updating software. Make sure that you
are watching what's going on and we'll
be back when it finishes. So, the
process finished. We're now at 100%
completed. It tells us that it cleaned
up 23.4 megabytes of disk space. 617
items were optimized. Seven items were
fixed. Um, now this number here
sometimes won't match up with what it
had shown it was able to be cleaned. And
that just depends on what it found as it
was going through and fixing everything.
It does tell me still I have a system
weakness. And if I click over here, I
can see exactly what that is. And it
tells me it lets websites provide
locally relevant content. This is an
advertising thing that if you ever watch
Google, um, the way they advertise, it
will track you. You can block that, but
it can, in my case, I just don't do it.
let Windows track app launches that you
can disable that, but it does also
affect how Windows operates and show me
suggested content in the setting sites.
It allows you to discover new features
within settings. I currently have it
enabled and it's recommending that I
move it to disabled. I'm currently okay
with all of these just because of of
what I, you know, how I feel it's going
to work, so I'm not worried about it.
But you can come in and you can make
these changes. It's pretty cool. You can
see that it also got rid of the junk
files and it shows you the junk files
that it did get rid of. In this case, it
shows me I've got 4.5 gigabytes of stuff
that did not get deleted. So, I'm going
to check that and hit finished and see.
Nope, it won't actually go through and
do it. So, I'm going to have to go
through and do it manually. Anyway,
there's a lot of different features to
this program. I highly recommend that
you use it.
It's something I've been using for a
long time and it makes even older
computers run a lot faster than if you
just kind of let them go. So, this is
one of the maintenance items I do
recommend for computers. If you have any
questions on this, put them down in the
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