Your PC needs to be looked after, otherwise it soon degenerates into a messy forest of files and folders. Every month (at least) you should be running a disk cleaner, defragging the hard drive and maybe even tidying the registry. Of course, these chores can easily be forgotten by the more disorganised, lazy and/or permanently baffled among us.

Unless you've got a copy of Service Your PC, that is, which will automatically carry out these tasks for you. The program is actually a re-badged version of Fix-It Utilities 7 Express; not that this is a bad thing. In fact, for a tenner, there's an absolute wealth of system maintenance utilities here.

When it comes to system servicing, there are two areas in which this package excels: hard drive and registry optimisation. For the former, Service Your PC provides DiskFixer, a quicker version of ScanDisk with a few more options. Secondly, it boasts JETDefrag, which does a thorough job and again offers more options than the Windows defragmentation module (though it seems a touch slower). SMARTDisk, a utility that checks for serious drive issues, backs these two up.

On the registry front, the main utility is RegistryFixer. This scans every inch of the registry, picking up invalid and erroneous entries, then presenting the user with a comprehensive list explaining exactly what it intends to remove and why. There's also a registry defragmenter that you can run afterwards to ensure your registry is leaner than a starving cheetah.

Another utility that impressed us was Startup Commander. This produces a list of all the programs that are automatically loaded on boot-up. It clearly tells you whether these pre-loads are needed or not, so you can get rid of any unnecessary items and benefit from a streamlined boot time. Occasionally a program isn't recognised, but it successfully identified most of our startup baggage and offered some good advice.

A full set of diagnostic hardware tests can also be performed using this package, plus there's a fairly basic disk cleaner, a file undeleter and a useful system recovery tool. There are a few other utilities on top of this lot, but generally they're fairly redundant extras such as a system clock synchronisation tool (hardly needed as Windows does this itself).

Service Your PC is surprisingly thorough considering its thrifty price tag. All it lacks in comparison to the Professional edition of Fix-It Utilities is the anti-virus and spyware protection modules, so if you've already got these bases covered, this is a very worthwhile purchase.

There's a host of useful maintenance utilities here, and if you shop around online you can get this for nearer a fiver than the ten pound RRP, which is excellent value for money.