Virus Chaser

[Petrovic]

Virus Chaser is a software product developed by a Korean company
Free version 8.0 is using Bitdefender engine:

https://www.viruschaser.com/01_product/product01.jsp
The page is in Korean

You can download Virus Chaser here:
x64
https://www.viruschaser.com/download/VC80b_64Setup.zip
x86
https://www.viruschaser.com/download/VC80b_32Setup.zip

Resource usage(in VM):

 

[Janl92l]

Hmm they use there own proactive modul? it seems so, or it is just B-have from the bitdefender engine. Would be nice if anyone can test this product.

 

[Kent]

Is it trustworthy enough?

 

[Prorootect]

Sure, that GUI design is awesome!

BUT user reviews are not awesome:
'Cons
It wont remove viruses. It takes up too much memory making your computer laggy. Once it is installed, it is almost impossible to fully uninstall it unless you know how to remove it from the registry (I had to do it in safe mode). And once u uninstall it, if certain files are still on your computer, it will re-install itself when you start up your computer.
Summary
DO NOT INSTALL THIS PROGRAM UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO ACCESS THE REGISTRY OR YOU KNOW HOW TO USE RUN OR SAFE MODE PROPERLY!!! IT IS VERY HARD TO FULLY UNINSTALL AND TAKES AT LEAST 30 MINS TO DO SO!!!'
- comment from 2012:
December 2, 2012 | By Koreachess
Version: Virus Chaser 5.0

- here: http://download.cnet.com/Virus-Chaser/3640-2239_4-10306308.html

- and it's not free, I think ..
On the web, you find other virus chaser's .. so beware!

 

[roger_m]

Sure, that GUI design is awesome!

BUT user reviews are not awesome

The reviews are for v5.0 which is a really old version, as the current version is 8.0. Also, Virus Chaser is now released by a different company as well.

Also, it is free now. I'm guessing it hasn't been available for free for long, but most certainly is free now. Maybe it was changed to a free product when they switched from using Dr.Web to Bitdefender for the scan engine. When v8.0 was first released in 2011 they were still using Dr.Web.

This is the link for the English product page.

I've been using Virus Chaser for over a week and now, and so far am very impressed. It is one of the lightest antiviruses there is (and I've tested many antiviruses this year), and accordingly there is very little performance impact on my aging Thinkpad with a fairly slow Intel T2300 dual core processor, which is more than I can say about most antiviruses.

By deafult it checks for updates every four hours, but this can be changed to check as often as every hour. Virus Chaser update their Bitdefender definitions every two hours, and sometimes release updates to their own definitions inbetween.

One problem you will face if you choose to install Virus Chaser, is that the installer seems to hang before the installation is complete. But, this is not actually the case. What is happening is that VC is silently updating its definitions. Due to the very slow speed of their servers and due to VC having to download over 800 updates (6 months of definitions) this can take some time. But, if you don't interrupt it, it will eventually finish.

When I first installed VC, I terminated the update process to finish the install. After that I tried multiple times to update the definitions, with each update failing before finishing. I had to manually download and extract the latest Bitdefender definitions (from Bitdefender's website) and then reboot to fix the update problem. After this it worked fine.

On a second computer I installed VC on, I just left the installer alone and let the update finish. In this case, the update did successfully complete.

Virus Chaser is working fine under Windows 10 Technical Preview.

 

[sinu]

How is its detection rate?
Is this compatible with windows 8?

 

[roger_m]

@sinu It will work on Windows 8, but I no longer recommend using Virus Chaser, as I installed on a few computers a few weeks ago and it was having problems dowloading definitions. This meant the the definitions were outdated. Maybe it was a temporay issues with their servers, but it is reason enough for me not to use it anymore.

I will try it again when they release a new version. It's one of programs I check for updates for daily.

 

[roger_m]

Virus Chaser 9.0 Enterprise was released a few hours ago. Despite it being an "Enterprise Edition", when installing it you have the option to install it as a free personal version. Its licence doesn't expire until December 31, 2020.

The product key is generated automatically, I just blanked it out.

The interface has been completely redesigned, and looks much better than the old interface which looked very dated in my opinion. As with the previous version it is using Bitdefender's scan engine alongside its own scan engine.

The website is only in Korean. Here are the download links:
32 bit
64 bit

 

[roger_m]

More screenshots:

I don't recommend using the registry optimizer, as it cleans the registry automaitcally without giving you the option to see what will be deleted, so you can't check for false positives.

As you can see, thankfully Virus Chaser can be configured to not automatically quarantine threats.

 

[sinu]

More screenshots:

I don't recommend using the registry optimizer, as it cleans the registry automaitcally without giving you the option to see what will be deleted, so you can't check for false positives.

As you can see, thankfully Virus Chaser can be configured to not automatically quarantine threats.

I just installed on win 7 and I found that installation is very fast and updates happens during installation, during ideal three process will be running which consumes less than 10 MB of ram and no load on CPU , during scan it consumes 35-45MB of RAM and 25-50% of CPU performance wise there is lot of improvements but I am not sure about its detection which is yet to be done