14 DAY TRIAL // Malware keeps on braking our crayons whenever browsing the Web. It takes many forms and the damage can be massive. The tools protecting you against online pests are many and not all of them do the job as promised. But there are some of them that do it responsibly and efficiently remove the nasties.
Malware Scanner is not freeware, the price tag reading $29.99. The application has no test period limit as the only limitation is that it will not remove the pests from your computer. Usually, this type of applications are not too presentable in the sense that the interface is not as good looking as it should. In this case, things are a bit different as Malware Scanner looks absolutely stunning.
On the downside, the slick interface is non-resizable and the functionality is close to minimum. Toolbar is nice and visible, but when it comes to taking a good look at the detected threats, the task is a challenge.
Looking at the features displayed by the developer, the application is quite appealing. You have three scan options (Full scan, Quick scan and Custom Volume scan), the user can choose what area of the computer to scan (registry, memory or folders) and sentence the detected items to deletion, quarantine or keep them on the computer.
Besides the regular features, Malware Scanner contains a System Guard module designed to monitor startup items, BHOs (Nrowser Helper Objects), Windows and IE. All these options are cramped in the non-resizable interface, making handling them a bit too uncomfortable.
Toolbar's first option is Status. The window presents general information about the program and not your computer. Here you'll learn about the latest definition file, number of scans of the computer, the date of the last scanned as well as the number of threats detected, how many of them have been removed, ignored and quarantined.
The scan button gives you the three scan alternatives mentioned before. For Memory and Registry checks in Custom Scan the user has the possibility of choosing between a quick process or a more pervasive and effective one. When it comes to the folders, there is nothing you can do as the option is either enabled or not. You have no say on the folders to be scanned.
The time taken to check all the selected locations for malware is a bit longer than expected, given that the returned results are not that many. Also, the detected malware list is very dense with false positives. Taking a better look at some of the pests revealed by Malware Scanner we noticed that some of the items pointed to perfectly healthy Windows registry keys and did not create any of the malicious files on the computer.
On the good side, on the left hand part of the interface there is a small description window providing pieces of information on the selected malware. It'll tell you what category it fits and gives the threat level. However, I would not entirely trust that as a trojan listed as a Severe threat in Malware Scanner was labeled as Low Threat in Symantec spyware database. Medium impact items were also listed as a severe risk in Malware Scanner (check results list picture no. 6 for MyBugFreePC). The descriptions of the pests perfectly fit those on Symantec.
The software is equipped with a number of guards that should protect your system. These are split into two columns: System Guards and Internet Guards. From the first category, you can enable startup protection, active memory process guard, secure Windows Hosts and the services. Internet Guards deals with protecting your browser against hijacking, safe guard IE favorites folder, protect IE toolbars and Browser Helper Objects (BHO).
Configuring the application is not a tough job, either. General Options let you add Malware Scanner to the list of Windows Startup items, start minimized for the least intrusion, enable automatic save of the log files and set its process priority to high. Computer resources are not at all skimpy as during scanning operation Malware Scanner held its flag high with CPU usage (over 80% all the time) and RAM abuse (never lowered 70MB limit).
Options submenu contains Scan Options alternative which lets you customize the locations where the application should search for malware and the response upon detection. The process of the detected malware can be stopped, set the application to scan all user accounts, memory, cookies, registry, files/folders.
To make the job less painful, Malware Scanner comes with a built-in scheduler designed to relieve you of the manual start of the scan. The program can be set to run daily, weekly or monthly. You get to choose the time (to the minute) and date of the action. During our testing, the job started about one minute after the scheduled time, but it started.
Tools section comes with a bunch of managers that let you take a closer look at what runs on your computer. Hosts file manager, IE Toolbars, LSP manager, Start manager and BHO manager aim at revealing unauthorized items on your computer. However, Startup manager seems to display less than actually starts with Windows. And it included a LNK file that was nowhere on my computer.
The Good
The interface is looking very nice and the choice of colors is indeed fortunate.
The Bad
I will limit the baddies to what has been mentioned and say that the interface takes quite a bit to load the different screens you access, the definition files are a bit behind (updated with three days old definitions).
Also, help file is in need of an update as it hasn't been changed since version 2.1.0.10 and you will find here and there some spelling mistakes (these are present in the interface, too).
The Truth
It comes with lots of false positives that work as goad to purchase. Considering all of the above, I guess it is useless to say that the price is way too much.
Trial version does not allow you to remove the detected malware so there is no say as to what it will detect afterwards. The truth is that scanning the computer with trusted anti-spyware and anti-virus softwares revealed that none of the threats indicated by Malware Scanner were present on the machine.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
