Email sales@bottleneckonline.com and a person will read it. Include your order number if the question is about a licence or a payment.
Billing and refunds are handled by Paddle, our merchant of record — you can also contact them directly at paddle.net using the order number on your receipt.
Check your spam folder — the email carries a licence key and filters sometimes object. If it is not there, have it sent again using the address you bought with. The key was issued whether or not the email reached you.
Email us with the address you bought with, or the order number from your Paddle receipt, and we will reissue it. There is no account to log into — the key is the licence, which is why it is worth keeping somewhere safe.
Almost always a copy-and-paste problem: a missing character at either end, or a line break introduced by an email client. Copy it again straight from the email, including everything between the start and the end with no spaces. If it still fails, send us the key and we will check it against what we issued.
An update plan only issues a key when we can find the licence it extends, which we do from your purchase history. That usually fails for one reason: you checked out with a different email address from your original purchase and did not paste your existing key. Choosing a different tier from your licence does the same. Either way you have still paid — email us the order number and we will issue the right key or refund it, whichever you prefer.
Yes. Nothing is tied to hardware. Install on the new machine and paste the same key.
Drive health (wear, temperature, error counts) and firmware settings can only be read with administrator rights, so Bottleneck asks for them each time it opens. If you choose No, it does not start, and nothing on the machine has been changed.
Expected scores come from published relative performance anchored to measured hardware, so unusual configurations can sit outside the model. Export the report and send it to us — that is genuinely how the reference data gets better.
In %LOCALAPPDATA%\Bottleneck\history, or beside the executable in portable
mode. They never leave the machine. Note that scan files record the machine's own IP
address, subnet and gateway, so treat a shared estate folder as inventory data.
Settings → Updates. The application then works entirely offline on the dataset it shipped with; findings stay accurate, but newly released hardware may not be recognised.
Step-by-step fixes for the most common reasons a PC is slower than its hardware. Each one works whether or not you use Bottleneck.
A slow PC usually has one or two causes that cost nothing to fix. What to check first, in order: background programs, startup apps, storage, memory, power and heat.
Windows times every start and records what made it slower. How to read that record, and what to do about each cause.
Short freezes usually mean memory ran out, the drive could not keep up or the processor was flat out. How to tell which, and fix it.
How to find which program keeps the drive busy, the usual causes in Windows 11 and 10, and the fixes that last.
What different kinds of use need, how to check in Task Manager whether your PC runs out, and what to know before adding more.
A nearly full drive, TRIM switched off, or an NVMe drive in a slow slot: how to check each one in Windows.
Drives usually warn before they fail. How to read their health in Windows, what the numbers mean, and what to do next.
Windows records how much charge the battery holds compared with when it was new. How to read it in two minutes, and what the numbers mean.
All 18 guides, including low GPU usage, Resizable BAR and dual channel memory — and the bottleneck calculator.
Something wrong, missing, or that could be better? Tell us here and a person will read it. If Bottleneck is installed you can also send feedback from inside it, including Is this right? under each finding - the quickest way to tell us one was wrong.
We keep what you send so we can act on it. The privacy notice says how.
An exported report tells us far more than a description does, and it never contains your licence key.
Email support