Poll Secondary virus removal tool & anti malware scanner

[anirbandutta01]

Now a days, it's better to use a good secondary anti malware scanner as Virus, Malware or Ransomware attack increased day by day with new techniques & detection could easily skipped by antivirus detection event cloud based signature. But there's still a question regarding usability & performance of the scanner. So we should choose a good one which is good & lightweight.

Please mention which anti malware scanner are you using & why.

 

[TairikuOkami]

Norton Power Power - fast and reliable
Hitman Pro - fast daily scan at startup
Emsisoft - offline for an in-depth scan

P.S. I prefer SophosClean instead of Hitman Pro, slightly different results, but free cleanup

 

[Wrecker4923]

• ESET online scanner. Good reputation, thorough, and auto-update. First-line usage by malware removal forums.
• KVRT. Good reputation, thorough, and picks up some that ESET misses.
• Emsisoft. Their VT configuration seems to pick up new strains really fast. Auto-update. Quick scan.
• Sophos. Quick scan. Their VT configuration seems to pick up strains that ESET and Microsoft miss.

 

[roger_m]

• Norton Power Eraser - Excellent malware detection and very fast scans
• Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool - Excellent malware detection
• Malwarebytes - It doesn't hurt to have it as a second opinion scanner

I rarely use HitmanPro/Sophos Scan and Clean anymore due to too many false positives. I don't use Emsisoft Emergency Kit anymore either, as I feel the others I've mentioned are more than adequate.

 

[anirbandutta01]

Malwarebytes - It doesn't hurt to have it as a second opinion scanner

Okay but it's incompatible with Kaspersky also not lightweight.

 

[roger_m]

Okay but it's incompatible with Kaspersky also not lightweight.

It is compatible with Kaspersky. If you want to use it with Kaspersky's antivirus (rather than just the removal tool), I believe you may just have to uninstall it before installing Kaspersky and then reinstall it after installing Kaspersky. Malwarebytes is lightweight for me, as I don't use its realtime protection.

 

[anirbandutta01]

reinstall it after installing Kaspersky. Malwarebytes is lightweight for me, as I don't use its realtime protection.

Ok I'll definitely try Malwarebytes free.

 

[JasonUK]

• Norton Power Eraser - Excellent malware detection and very fast scans
• Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool - Excellent malware detection
• Malwarebytes - It doesn't hurt to have it as a second opinion scanner

These are the three I use as secondary scanners too

 

[Parkinsond]

Norton Power Power - fast and reliable

Fast if using full scan which includes only few locations; it took 8 hours to scan 1.26 TB of data, most of it video files.

 

[Parkinsond]

• ESET online scanner. Good reputation, thorough, and auto-update. First-line usage by malware removal forums.
• KVRT. Good reputation, thorough, and picks up some that ESET misses.
• Emsisoft. Their VT configuration seems to pick up new strains really fast. Auto-update. Quick scan.
• Sophos. Quick scan. Their VT configuration seems to pick up strains that ESET and Microsoft miss.

Is not KVRT autoupdating like NPE?

 

[Wrecker4923]

Is not KVRT autoupdating like NPE?

The last time I received a notification that the version was outdated, there was no actionable UI to update it. I downloaded a new version and replaced the old one.

 

[Parkinsond]

The last time I received a notification that the version was outdated, there was no actionable UI to update it. I downloaded a new version and replaced the old one.

So if I do not want to redownload the scanner each time for new scan, NPE is a better choice compared to KVRT.

 

[roger_m]

The last time I received a notification that the version was outdated, there was no actionable UI to update it.

There's just an update now link, that when clicked opens your browser and downloads the latest version.

 

[Wrecker4923]

I have also been using Sophos, which doesn't noticeably download any updates at all (and no regularly updated version). Downloading is a small price to pay for me.

 

[Parkinsond]

There's just an update now link, that when clicked opens your browser and downloads the latest version.

This is not update, this is redownloading the the scanner; I refer to updating signatures of already downloaded scanner.

 

[harlan4096]

Is not KVRT autoupdating like NPE?

No, in general you have to download the last version of KVRT always before a new scan.

 

[Parkinsond]

even for those autoupdating such as NPE?

 

[roger_m]

even for those autoupdating such as NPE?

That's just for KVRT.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Hitman Pro & Emsisoft is close to being dead software, even HMP.Alert is kind of dead these days after Sophos bought it and the main dev's behind it left, one of the brothers anyway.

roger_m nailed it, those 3 he listed are very good. I would add ESET too since they do make good software. The rest are dead and not worth it.

 

[brambedkar59]

Fast if using full scan which includes only few locations; it took 8 hours to scan 1.26 TB of data, most of it video files.

Yeah, NPE is really slow when scanning folders manually. Its full scan skips a lot of stuff, that's why it's done so fast.

For now, I am using NPE and EEK. I would use KVRT if I wasn't already running KFree for real-time.