ever since the channel hijack I have been inundated with Facebook ads for the
fix me stick they claim it will remove
viruses clean my computer and even get
my Windows running like new all in about
20 minutes those are some pretty bold claims but their company got offers from
all four of the investors on the Canadian version of Shark Tank back in
2014. they're sold on the shopping channel and they're still around nearly
10 years later they must be doing something right how is it that I've
never heard of them then inundating Facebook ads they're sold on the
shopping channel right this thing ain't aimed at me or you they're targeting our
parents our aunts and our friends who
keep asking for help tracking down the elusive any key but that doesn't
necessarily mean that it's bad maybe it's a great option for those of us who
are techy enough to fix our family's computers but would rather that they
just buy this and leave us alone so we and play video games to find out we
bought one actually we bought three and I think you're going to be surprised to
learn exactly what they do and what they
don't do for example none of them were capable of making this Segway to our
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down below hey there it is in a nutshell the fix me
stick is a bootable virus removal device that's designed to find and remove any
malware that's managed to slip past your PC's defenses which is not as rare as
you might think half a million New pieces of malware are discovered daily
and the makers of the FixMeStick claim that it finds malware on more than 80
percent of the computer scanned even though virtually all of them were
already running some other form of antivirus their main value is the
user-friendly interface that they've wrapped around a bootable Linux image
that needs almost no input from the user you just boot from the stick accept the
license and the FixMeStick will automatically connect to the internet
ask you to register which you can Skip by the way check for updates load up not
one not two but three antivirus engines Avira sofos and McAfee and then get
right to scanning with all three of them at the same time while that's running I
guess I should tell you about our test system we took one part Windows 10 test
bench and added a few dozen drops of threats you'd expect any decent
antivirus engine to flag you know various forms of the icar anti-malware
tests along with some very real though relatively harmless malware not a huge
challenge but definitely enough to prove that each of those three antivirus
engines is actually doing something as advertised about 20 minutes later the
scans were done and the FixMeStick was asking for input the default action is
to remove all malware found but you can also pick what happens with each flagged
file in our not terribly scientific testing the FixMeStick caught more than
90 of our threat files with the majority spotted by all three engines but with
that said Each one engine did miss things that were caught by at least one
of the others which I guess answers the question of why does it need to run all
three we also tested the FixMeStick against a medi-cat USB stick to see if a
the FixMeStick would scan removable media at all and B to see if it would
flag useful tools as malware as expected
we did get false positives on some of our system utilities but this did show
us that yes removable media is automatically scanned alongside your
operating system Drive in fact by default FixMeStick scans all files on
all partitions whether they're on removable drives or not you can change
that behavior and some other basic options on the settings screen where you
can also remove items from quarantine and even subject yourself to some
targeted marketing if you're into that sort of thing this smooth experience
doesn't come for free though one year's use of FixMeStick on up to three PCS is
going to set you back 80 US Dollars whereas two years on five PCS is thirty
dollars more for a total of a hundred and ten dollars that is not an
insignificant amount however you're not necessarily stuck paying that much it
can often be found cheaper in your local Big Box store and they have a 30-day
trial that will set you back just twenty dollars if you pretty much just want to
use it once however I have a Siri biggest problem with their marketing of
that trial price they pretend to give you a special deal when you click
through an ad then at the same time they just plainly state that the 20 trial is
available on various Pages all over their website I also don't think that
the FixMeStick in general quite lives up to their marketing claims most of their
ads seem to make a big deal about speeding up slow systems and eliminating
crashes and freezing while FixMeStick can do those things if the problems are
being caused by malware it can't do anything to clean up a full drive repair
broken Windows files or sort out misconfigured settings this is isn't a
technician on a stick it's just an antivirus tool as many of you I know are
probably dying to contribute right now you can make one
of these on your own for free there are plenty of bootable anti-malware tools
out there that you can just slap onto your USB stick and run insert disclaimer
about us not having validated their efficacy so your mileage may vary but the main issue with all of them for Joe
or for Jill average is that they're just not as polished as this and they're not
as fast you will likely need to manually update your virus definitions before you
run a scan and the scan itself takes longer too then when it's done you're
gonna have to run more tools to catch whatever's been missed for me or for you
that's no big deal but for many people time is money and tinkering with
computers isn't something that they do for pleasure which is why I guess
FixMeStick has found a market it's not cheap but it does cost less than a visit
to the local computer shop for virus removal and having something that you
can just hand to Aunt Susie that's gonna just work on a simple infection could be
worth it for her she might even be so grateful she gets you a new pcmr hoodie
from lttstore.com where FixMeStick really offers bang for the buck though
is the back me up Edition twenty dollars more gets you a 64 gig USB stick that
also automatically backs up files from the users folder of your system drive
after scanning them giving you at least a little bit of protection if you later
get hit with something that the fix me stick cannot resolve something like a
ransomware attack this may actually be the simplest method that we've seen for
making a backup for an average user's PC by default it backs up pretty much
everything that a casual user might be storing though we did notice some
glaring emissions like photoshop's PSD format so if you're beyond a casual user
or if you need more than 64 gigs of storage you might want to tweak the
settings to include other extensions or to Target additional folders by that
point you might as well pick up a larger external drive and then just use the
only slightly more complicated tools that are built right into Windows or Mac
OS we also looked at their start me stick and to many of you this is going
to look like a pretty old idea a simple bootable operating system that just
works on any old hardware for the folks buying fixmesticks though this might as
well be magic now grandpa can get on Facebook and check his email with things
feeling nice and Zippy with a lightweight operating system and a
modern browser he can even use it on any PC so he can take it with him when he
travels but there are some problems for one thing it's a read-only system which
means you can't screw up the OS by downloading something nasty but on the
other hand it means that any new bookmarks or files are going to Simply
vanish on reboot and it doesn't give the user any indication that that's going to
happen as you're using it it looks like it's done what you've told it to do your
downloads and your bookmarks hang out in temporary storage while the OS is
running but unless you add a separate external drive for storage and sign into
a Google account for your bookmarks all of it will disappear even worse is the
fact that this means it cannot update itself for updates you have to boot into
Windows run the updater for your start me stick then boot back into your live
OS convenient the second big issue is that it's 80 and it expires if your
subscription expires why anybody watching this no this one
really is easy could Google something like persistent live USB and follow a
guide or or just download Rufus and drag
the slider to the right to create a similar bootable USB stick and that one
would even let Grandpa save files in his home drive all for the cost of a USB
stick and anywhere from 10 minutes to a
couple hours of time and it would never cost you anything for updates or I mean
if you just wanted to skip all of that you could just put a simple Linux
install on the system's hard drive in the first place improving Grandpa's
performance without the need for unreliable USB boot media
so then fix me 6 product line is something of a mixed bag a bootable
antivirus that's simple enough for almost anyone to use is actually useful
and when paired with automatic backups it might even be something that I would
recommend to the less tech savvy user
but then at the same time the pricing is
pretty spicy their marketing ranges from optimistic to downright unacceptable and
whatever they might say these tools aren't and never will be a replacement
for a competent technician they're also not a replacement for our sponsor Micro
Center they've renamed August to build
your own month in honor of the dozens of amazing new discounts on their site not
sure if they have the legal right to do that but here we are new customers can
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look around and think uh oh I don't see any micro Centers near me but that might
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Micro Center this build your own month and get a sneak peek at their new
Charlotte location at the links below I'm gonna miss saying August if you
enjoyed this video you might be interested in the video we did a couple years back testing how antivirus
programs impact your system performance you can find that at the link down below