STOPzilla AntiVirus

STOPzilla! AntiVirus is a lightweight antivirus that promises to protect your system against viruses, spyware, malware or other types of threats that may present a risk to your PC security. It can be deployed on Windows Vista, 7, and 8.

The antivirus comes with support for real-time threat detection, different scan modes and threat removal. Plus, it is able to identify and get rid of rootkits before they infiltrate and infect your computer.

STOPzilla! AntiVirus makes a really good impression in the visual department. It displays a dashboard with the antivirus utilities that you can tweak.

A help manual is not included in the package so rookies may find it difficult to set up the configuration parameters on their own. In case you need help, you can appeal to the technical support. Tooltips are also shown each time you hover your mouse cursor over a specific feature.

The real-time protection mode is developed for automatically identifying and removing viruses before they gain control of your computer. Advanced users may select the locations that the program protects while the real-time feature is turned on, such as Internet Settings, System Startup, Shell Options, Windows Logon, Trojans, Execution, and INI file Mapping.

STOPzilla! AntiVirus comes with support for five types of scans, namely Quick, Intelligent, Full, Custom, or Scheduled. The Quick mode is the fastest one and can be used for looking for viruses in the most common places from your system.

You can always rely on a Full scan for checking your entire computer thoroughly for possible threats. The custom scan allows you to select the locations that you want to be checked for viruses. You can take proactive measures and schedule scan tasks on certain days of the week and at a custom time.

STOPzilla! AntiVirus helps you automatically update virus definitions, conserve battery power, show notifications in case of threat detection, use Direct3D for rendering the user interface elements, as well as enable the gaming mode in order to disable notifications and scheduled scans.

You can customize the scan process by making the application look for rootkits, use less system resources and automatically update virus definitions before a system scan is activated.

What’s more, STOPzilla! AntiVirus lets you scan inside archives, search for potentially unwanted programs (PUP) or low-risk threats, automatically clean viruses without offering the choice to select the preferred disinfection type, as well as scan cookies and removable drives. Plus, you can keep a list with ignored threats and build a list with file extensions that are scanned during active protection and intelligent system scan.

A special protection module is embedded in STOPzilla! AntiVirus for helping you make sure viruses don’t get into your system via Outlook, Outlook Express or other email clients. You can enable the anti-phishing mode and filter spam emails for POP3 clients.

A custom scan with 500 virus samples took about 15 minutes in our tests on Windows 8.1 Pro. The tool detected 498 out of 500 infected items. The process took that much time because we made the app scan processes, known file types, cookies, registry entries, all users, rootkits, archives and other options. It eats up a moderate amount of system resources, so you do not need a powerful computer to run it.

STOPzilla! AntiVirus provides information about each identified threat (name, location, type and severity) and allows you to delete, send to the quarantine, ignore or disinfect the viruses.

STOPzilla! AntiVirus is all worthy of your attention because it’s got an excellent virus detection ratio. Other enhancements, like real-time protection, anti-phishing and anti-spam modules, gaming mode and automatic updates of virus definitions, make this antivirus a reliable one, although not the most powerful one on the market. It lacks boot-time scans, anti-hijack protection, removal of browser add-ons, and virtualized environment where you can install tools without affecting your system security, just to name some advanced features.