100% fine. No tool bars...nothing. Works brilliantly.

Never tried PerfectDisk, Leo...but I'm perfectly happy with sd3 as I was with prior versions..

Don't know what to tell you, Daiwa.

Daiwa.........Just checked the Raxco site and you are right, they've taken it down..........but I found an old link on Neowin.............Here.............http://www.neowin.net/news/raxco-goes-freeware-with-its-popular-perfectdisk

Download for the install seems to be working although I did not take it right thru' the install process as I already have the paid for version.

So I just updated smartdefrag on a friends laptop and noticed...immediatley after the install the window opens to have you do a few more things to complete the install...and down at the bottom of this window (it's all black with small white font) are the options to ad the iobit toolbar, make iobit your homepage/search engine, etc...all with teeny tiny little boxes (pre-checked with blue check marks) .

I missed this on my own upgrade. I also imagine a LOT of folks miss it because they draw your attention to other stuff. So it's not like they are sneaking the stuff in in as much as they aren't making it very obvious that you can actually opt out.

I think that's what happened to me with AVC.

I cleaned up all the toolbar crap with AdwCleaner and Junkware Removal Tool (both work very nicely as one shot cleaners).

I noticed on ASC when doing the install there's a bit that comes up with a check box for custom install. Tick it and other check boxes come up wanting to change your search engine and home page plus install the iobit toolbar. Just uncheck those boxes and you get none of the bloat.

That's true for a 'normal' install, Uvah.  Wasn't the case with the 2.9 install - it just got hijacked: version 3 of SD was installed as well as all the other 'optional' apps without any opportunity to decline.  First time I've seen something like that occur.

Also, Iobit programs don't uninstall properly.  And a funny thing is, I uninstalled Iobit Smart Defrag and tried to run Auslogics Disk Defrag Free and it doesn't even run.

Seems that their practices have got a bit dodgy.  I wonder how long it has been going on, or whether it is just coming to light now.

When you uninstalled Smart Defrag did also run something like CCleaner to remove left over stuff from the registry and reboot before installing Auslogics Disk Defrag?

I ran CCleaner, WiseRegistry Cleaner, and Glary's Utility. They don't get all of the iobit's lil' bits, as it were.

I came across AdwCleaner and Junkware Removal Tool in an article on BleepingComputers and these found and removed all the left over iobit stuff, including the iobit toolbar files and an AskToolbar installation exe file that kept popping up in 'My Documents'. (The AskToolbar crap was courtesy of Any Video Converter). The tools don't install anything, they just scan and remove crap. You may need to do a reboot with both, depending on what they find.

Here is a link to the article LINK

JRT is a good one, use it occasionally. 

That Ask [should read ASS] toolbar crap should be registered as trojan-like malware and declared 100% illegal everywhere on planet Earth, for all the trouble it causes people.  I can't begin to count how many times I've had people come to me with requests to remove it... which I did, but over the years it seems to have become more resistant to removal, thus requiring greater time and effort to eradicate it.

Frankly, the people at Ask who came up with this insidious piece of crap should be hung up by the nuts from and old tree for the crows to feed on.

Yep, Junk Removal Tool is a great piece of software that finds stuff that other tools miss/leave behind.  I love the fact that it is regularly updated, is portable/doesn't install on your system, and is very easy to use... one click to start, one click to fix.  I run it at least once a month just to check that I've not picked up anything nasty in my browsers, etc.  Most often the result comes back clean, but it pays to be vigilant in this day and age of programmers with ill-intent. 

JRT is free to use and can be downloaded from Majorgeeks

Nah, Ask.com has graciously provided the removal tool from its site,yes,it's official.

http://help.ask.com/link/portal/30015/30018/Article/1/How-do-I-remove-the-Ask-com-Toolbar

Or...you could have searched Forums for "Toolbars" and found a review of Junkware Removal Tool:

https://forums.wincustomize.com/443419/page/1/#replies

It isn't hard to remove the Ask toolbar. I once inadvertently installed it awhile back and all it took was Revo uninstaller to take it out. I've since moved on to ASC's uninstaller, much faster, and it lists all the toolbars, addons and whatnot in each browser you use. So if anything gets in without you knowing it you can use ASC to check it out and remove it if you want.

I have removed the two iobit programs I had on my computer (Smart Defrag and an old version of Game Booster) based on this thread.  It even seemed to block the install of Auslogics Disk Defrag Free, unless I got a bad download.  But I deleted the relevant registry entries (iobit) and used MoveOnBoot to delete the iobit folders before Windows 7 properly starts because they seemed to be blocked from deleting once Windows had started.