Brothers and Sisters, are you ready to be saved from the bugaboos of computer hell? Is that one-eyed monster on your desk causing you to think unclean thoughts?

Put that sledgehammer away, my friends, and come worship at the tabernacle of Executive Software, banishing sluggish and uncooperative PCs to the deep, dark, dank pits below.

Diskeeper 9 ($29.95 for the Home Edition, $49.95 for the Professional Edition) and Undelete 5 ($29.95 for Home Edition, $39.95 for Professional Edition, $299 for the Server version) should be on your "must-have" list right next to a good anti-virus program and a firewall.

Diskeeper 9

Diskeeper is the ultimate defragmenter for sluggish PCs, while Undelete can find all those lost files you thought were gone forever, even if they've been deleted from the recycle bin.

Those of you who have used the defragmenter that comes with Microsoft Windows XP are already familiar with what Diskeeper can do, but the full version of the program expands upon the basic utility.

Fragmentation occurs when files are broken up into fragments to "fit" in certain areas of the hard drive in our PCs. The end result is a sluggish computer. And, when the disk fragmentation in too high, our once-faithful PCs slow down to a crawl.

Diskeeper digs deep to analyze the hard drive, find those fragmented files and restore, speeding up your machine.

Among its key features:

• The ability to run 300 to 500 percent faster than XP's built-in defragmenter.
• You can set it and forget it. It can run on its own at scheduled intervals, analyzing and restoring your files while you do other things.
• A utility called I/O Smart detects when you need to access the hard drive and pauses the defragmentation operation until you're finished.
• You can see how defragmentation is affecting your PC through the program's graphic displays.

The only problem I've had running the program is that it can be slow when you run it for the first time, especially when analyzing the first 12 percent of your hard drive. The folks at Executive Software say the lag is necessary because the program is looking at all of your system files. So, when using it for the first time, sit down with a good book while the program does its thing.

Undelete 5

Undelete is a program Microsoft should have included with XP.

After installed, it constantly monitors your PC and captures images of files that have been created or modified, including those in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It will also go back to earlier versions of those files and restore them to the exact state they were in before changes were made.

In addition:

• A recovery bin mimics the directory structure of your hard drive allowing you to find and recover files with a couple of mouse clicks.
• The Professional Edition will allow you to restore files remotely on a network so you don't have to work on individual PCs.
• It can recover files that were deleted before the program was installed, provided they haven't been overwritten. Plus you can recreate the original folders.
• The SecureDelete feature makes sure files that you actually want to send to oblivion are overwritten with random data so they can't be recovered.
• You can preview files in the recovery bin before restoring them using the enhanced browsing feature.

For more information on either of these programs, go to www.executive.com.

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