Posts tagged Scanner

If you never heard about malware attacks, it means you’re living under a rock. After highly devastating Nimda and Bagle worms that brought Internet to knees, and the explosion of rogue security scams like XP antivirus and Antispyware Master, it’s obvious that sooner or later every PC user faces the need to remove malware.

Literally hundreds of all kinds of software, tools and utilities are sold promising to clean out every possible infection. However, most of the advertised products never deliver, and the rest cannot guarantee the 100% detection and removal rate.

Purchasing several programs (antivirus, antispyware, antispam, etc) sure helps in removing malware, but the price easily goes beyond $100, not speaking about yearly subscription update. Many computer owners have reasons to consider this price unacceptable.

A common myth about PC security is that having antivirus program updated with latest malware definitions is enough to protect the computer. But being as focused as they are, antivirus programs easily miss a number of other types of malware, which are simply exuberant these days. The terms itself includes well over a dozen of threats, from phishing to identity theft, which is much broader than a virus definition.

That’s why it should be remembered that no antivirus is capable of detecting every malicious program, and one or another pest may one day find its way to sneak into the system. Then the question rises, “how to remove malware once it is inside?”

I am not going to tell you to buy yet another cool software. One a single occurrence of infection takes place, it’s just not justifiable to spend money to do the job that takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Once you know what free malware remover can do a full system cleaning.

Command-line scanners provided by software manufacturers are powerful, yet free tools built on the code of their main anti-malware programs with which they share the pest definitions and detection algorithms. You shouldn’t be afraid of the term “command-line scanner” because it’s really easy to use, and requires minimum input on user’s part.

Command-prompt based malware removal tools require no installation, that’s why they are very helpful when due to system corruption no new software can be installed (at this stage, users often bring their computers to repair men, where leave outrageous sums of money to get PC’s fixed, not speaking about the time their computers are left without service). A little command-line scanner detects and removes a wide variety of infections:

• rootkits
• dialers
• spyware
• adware
• Trojans
• Worms

All that’s needed to start the malware removal process is download the archive from manufacturer’s website, unpack it, and run the command prompt. Then, type in the string of commands to instruct the program how to handle infections, and hit Enter. It’s easier than configuring desktop antivirus software, really!

Providing you have a decent antivirus protection, a second layer of PC security is all you need for safe surfing. Run a test with command-line scanner to explore a non-GUI component, critical to your PC security.

Learn how to use a-squared command-line free malware removal tool to get rid of spyware, adware, dialers, rootkits, worms and other infections.

Alberta Glamerheim is PC maintenance consultant who writes articles on computer security and related topics.