FixBee: A free Disk Cleaner and Defragmenter

Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmentation is an essential diagnostic technique recommended by Microsoft and since Windows XP there have been in-built tools to perform these two jobs. But still Microsoft's tool haven't got much popularity because a number of third party software do the same thing with more flexibility. FixBee is a new addition in this list but I am unsure if this can be rated above Microsoft's Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmentation tool in Windows Vista or 7.

Company

FixBee has been developed in Republic of Cyprus. Although there is mention in the software's interface about the existence of this company since 1999 I haven't found any evidence about its earlier existence. Also FixBee is now only in version 1.0.0.0.

Download

The software is distributed as an online installer. This is actually a bad thing because in this way it cannot be installed in offline computers. But after googling a bit I have found a offline installer too.

Offline Installer
http://download.fixbee.com/001/FixBeeV1pack.exe
File size:4413713 bytes
MD5     :C5B9435E9F9043EB620E80F216354333
SHA1    :4ABDB3CE269124BF43DD271EDDFE57F603BD909C
CRC32   :DF008D17

Online Installer
http://download.fixbee.com/FixBeeV1.exe
File size:466776 bytes
MD5     :30D58A34E7FD4E573D5AD0C9E6D5DECA
SHA1    :27ED99070FB872F0A3EBA32F604D36C85DB104B4
CRC32   :3ACCB987

Installation

• Installation is smooth with offline installer. Creation of desktop and quick launch icons can be avoided by clearing the check-boxes. The only problem with the offline installation is that the license agreement is box is empty.
• For online installation it automatically selects standard installation with installs Searchqu Toolbar by default, changes Internet Explorer and Firefox Homepage to Searchqu and sets Search-Results.com search as the web search engine. These are essentially a bad thing and it is highly recommended to choose custom installation and clear the check-boxes of those unwanted installations (as shown below).

 

•  Anyway online installation also creates shortcuts for fTalk without giving any further choice.

 Software Usage

• The interface of the software is very clean and easy to navigate.
• There is no offline help for the software and the online help leads to a 404 error page.
• The software doesn't allow to run both jobs simultaneously and during cleanup/defragmentation software remains partially unresponsive e.g. it don't minimize.
• There is not much settings in the two types of optimizations that it performs. It offers scheduling of both the tasks.

 

• The cleanup feature can search and clean Junk Files, Temporary Files and Empty Folders. It creates system restore points before every cleanup and there is no option to avoid making restore point on every time.

 

• Disk Defragmentation seems quite basic too. It doesn't offer simultaneous defragmentation of multiple drives. It scans drive, shows short report and recommends about optimization. Detailed report opens in Internet Explorer not in the default browser. After optimization it shows final report.

 

 

My Opinion
I have used a number of Freeware Disk Cleaners and Defragmenters. FixBee is a new tool and appears promising. But till now it has much lesser features compared to other similar products and is best compared with windows inbuilt tools but with a cool interface.

via TIS