Serious Discussion Which Third Party Scanners Do You Use in 2026?

[devjitdutta2025]

Infostealer would not wait till the next second month.

If your secondary scanner manages to find an infostealer actively running on your PC, the damage has already been done long ago.

 

[devjitdutta2025]

Secondary scanners are only useful to detect if anything has slipped past your AV. The moment your secondary scanner finds anything, it’s better to treat that PC as infected and either reinstall the OS or restore from a clean backup. Secondary scanners are most of the time unable to remove persistent malware which embeds into scheduled tasks. The only 2 I would trust are KVRT and NPE(soon to be discontinued). You can download and scan once per month using KVRT. Malwarebytes is useful when it comes to dealing with exe malware and pups.

 

[RetiredOldMan]

Malwarebytes Premium on the Mac does the job for me.

 

[cartaphilus]

I have all these third-party scanners such as AdwCleaner, Avira PC Cleaner, Emsisoft Emergency Kit (EEK), ESET Online Scanner, Hitman Pro, HouseCall (Trend Micro), Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool, Malwarebytes, Norton Power Eraser (will be or has been discontinued), Orion Malware Cleaner, Panda Cloud Cleaner, RogueKiller, Sophos Scan and Clean, SUPERAntiSpyware Free, Zemana AntiMalware (practically dead). Although I have all these third-party scanners, it is very rare that I use any of them. Wait, a member and malware tester will appear, perhaps, who may know which scanner is best for you that fits the current scenario in 2026. Good luck! Stay safe!

OMG zemana it had such a great bright feature about a decade ago. Totally forgot about them. What happened what caused the downfall?

 

[cartaphilus]

Secondary scanners are only useful to detect if anything has slipped past your AV. The moment your secondary scanner finds anything, it’s better to treat that PC as infected and either reinstall the OS or restore from a clean backup. Secondary scanners are most of the time unable to remove persistent malware which embeds into scheduled tasks. The only 2 I would trust are KVRT and NPE(soon to be discontinued). You can download and scan once per month using KVRT. Malwarebytes is useful when it comes to dealing with exe malware and pups.

Totally agree unless you know forensic analysis it is 99% safer to nuke and pave especially if a 2ndary found anything since if it slipped pass your defenses then you are never truly certain when it did, how long it has been there (just because you detected this one doesn't mean it's the only one live or dormant that wakes up periodically) and what other things might be waiting.

Always have a backup. Best idea is to stick the OS onto a fast small NVME drive and use that drive for OS only. Every other major app or data is stored on separate drives. Then maintain a daily/weekly incremental backup scheme of just the OS while placing the other drives under anti-ransomware guard tools like ESET folder guard.

Apps can be replaced those don't need to be guarded against encryption. It's the data those apps generate that requires guarding.

 

[piquiteco]

OMG zemana it had such a great bright feature about a decade ago. Totally forgot about them. What happened what caused the downfall?

Yes, it was, although it did give some false positives. I don’t know what caused Zemana to decline. All I know is that, judging by the official website, it hasn’t received any updates since March 2021. The site is still active, as you can see in the screenshot below. We also don’t know if it’s compatible with Windows 11, because the release notes don’t mention Windows 11 at all. Windows 11 was released on October 5, 2021.

Spoiler: Zemana AntiMalware release notes

 

[stonjean633]

From what I know, Zemana SDK is being utilize by Watchdog brand. Not sure if that's still the case.

 

[Zero Knowledge]

Ahhh Zemana, spent $10 for a lifetime license on that junk. I guess the developer is sipping Mai Thai's on a Thailand beach laughing at us security folk.