Battle Best Free Second Opinion Scanner

jackuars

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Excluding real-time protection, which one of the following do you think acts as the best free second opinion scanner giving the best protection by finding and removing malware.

HitmanPro requires a pro version to clean malware so it's not included in the list.

If you can please list Pro's and Con's for each scanner it would be of great help
 

In2an3_PpG

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Others will probably agree that you can not name a single scanner as the best.

But anyway I'd choose Zemana as my main go to second opinion scanner.

Zemana is very easy to navigate. No need to change any settings. Updates very quickly. Multi engine. Pleasing user interface imo. Additional features include creating restore points prior to scanning, setting exclusions and you can now launch the Farbar Recovery Scan Tool right from the advanced settings to help with malware diagnosis.
 

Winter Soldier

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Others will probably agree that you can not name a single scanner as the best.

But anyway I'd choose Zemana as my main go to second opinion scanner.

Zemana is very easy to navigate. No need to change any settings. Updates very quickly. Multi engine. Pleasing user interface imo. Additional features include creating restore points prior to scanning, setting exclusions and you can now launch the Farbar Recovery Scan Tool right from the advanced settings to help with malware diagnosis.
Good points, and btw I had completely forgotten Farbar, very powerful malware diagnostic tool ;)
 

Evjl's Rain

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I keep 3 tools in my USB because each of them has its own pros & cons:
1/ Zemana portable: best free scanner with signatures. Great detection rate + very fast scanning speed

2/ Emsisoft emergency kit: only use when there is no internet connection. The detection rate and scanning speed are very good

3/ Norton power eraser: only use after using zemana. It's used for detecting malwares/leftovers that are missed by all other scanners. Highly not recommend to use it as the first scanner because it doesn't depend on signatures but file reputation, I think. The scanning speed is very good. False positive rate is very very high because it lists everything which has relatively low number of users. You have to make decision to remove them yourself

4 (optional)/ HitmanPro: only for new PC because of trial period

Bonus: herdProtect: it's so-so, the detection rate is good, scanning speed is slow and the processing time is usually at least 30mins (68 engines). Then you have to scan again

my formula:
1/ Zemana -> norton
2/ EEK -> try to restore the internet -> norton if possible
 
Last edited:

Solarquest

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Jul 22, 2014
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We use some of these scanners in the HUB.
I like Zemana, fast and great detection/updates BUT the scan misses some malwares on HD depending on location and extension.
I recommend it with the suggestion to run an appdata folder right click scan after the normal scan.
I then recommend Norton that has a great detection and also detects what other 2nd opinion scanners missed. I recommend using both for best detection chances.
HMP is also good since fast and also uses Kaspersky but "only" scans "executables".
Malwarebytes lost in detection in my opinion in the last months.
Emsisoft is recommended too but I use it less and less and mostly to check for PUPs and PUAs.
Depending of what you think you might have other tools might be useful, eg. TDSSkiller, ADWcleaner etc.
 
Last edited:

jamescv7

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Dr.Web Cure It!

Pros
  • Decent detection rate against nasty threats
  • Efficient removal rate from the detected threats
  • Managed to solve major symptons on a infected system
Cons
  • The detection rate is not on the whole scale based, since the database signature is not huge compare to others.


Norton Power Eraser

Pros
  • More technical on the nasty threat detection
  • Simple clicks

Cons
  • The signatures are not enough to lessen the infestation of a system.

Zemana Anti-malware

Pros
  • Great combination of engines to provide accurate detection as possible
  • Modernized UI and easy to navigate
Cons
  • It may provide false positive results considering of the engines use.
 

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