Sophos Clean

If you want to tighten up computer security, it's not enough to have just a single antimalware application installed. On the other hand, it's not recommended to get another antivirus tool either, since the two real-time engines might collide and, eventually, lead to system errors.

In this case, you can get a second opinion from another malware program, one which can only find and remove infected files instead of blocking incoming attacks too. If you're familiar with Sophos Virus Removal Tool (freeware), you might be interested in Sophos Clean, which is basically a premium edition of Virus Removal Tool. In addition to a malware scanner, it features a quarantine manager, scheduled scans, logs, and right-click menu integration for custom file and folder scans.

Installation isn't required, so you can double-click the downloaded .exe file to bring up the main app window. There are two scanning modes available: default and quick. It's not clear what the default scan implies but it seems to be more thorough than the quick one.

Since it's a portable product, Sophos Clean doesn't create additional files on the hard drive without your permission. However, if you wish to run it more than once, you can allow it to automatically scan the PC daily during startup and to create shortcuts in the desktop and start menu.

When it comes to the types of malware, Sophos Clean is capable of detecting riskware, browser tracking cookies and potentially unwanted programs (PUPs), among others. Once the scan is over, it lists all suspicious or infected files, giving you the possibility to remove them from the PC, send them to the quarantine for further analysis, ignore the ones you consider to be false positives, as well as view detailed information. Before removal, it auto-creates a system restore point.

As far as settings are concerned, you can prevent the app from auto-uploading suspicious files to the cloud as well as disable the restore point creation, PUP and tracking cookie scans. You can schedule scans, integrate the tool into the Windows Explorer context menu for custom file and folder scans, manage quarantine items, and inspect logs.

Scans were carried out quickly in our tests while the tool remained light on system resources consumption. Taking into account its clean interface and intuitive options, Sophos Clean might be just the second opinion you've been looking for when it comes to malware.