eScanAV AntiVirus Toolkit is a free way to scan and clean viruses, spyware, adware, and other malware.

eScanAV initially appears to install, but it is portable. Be sure to run this in safe mode. By the time you extract hundreds of files to the Windows temp folder (a favorite place for malware to be) and accept the license terms, more sophisticated malware has a chance to catch it and stop it. You can also run eScanAV AntiVirus Toolkit from a thumb drive or DVD.

Once up and running, you update or click "Scan & Clean," but there are numerous settings to speed up, or more importantly, target the area or potential problem better. You optionally scan Memory & Service, Registry, Startup Folders, System Folders, as well as select drives or even a particular folder and or subdirectories. Finally, you can also view network activity to look for suspicious items with eScanAV's own ViewTCP. It shows both active and established connections.

With the default settings, it scanned our small VMware partition in just under 2 minutes. You can save or view the log file at this point as well as clear it anytime from the main window.

Finally, there is a "Virus List" that you can view or generate available from the main window. It seemed to freeze the app up unless you wait, so it seems evident that eScanAV AntiVirus Toolkit uses a locally generated virus database to speed up scanning.

eScanAV AntiVirus Toolkit is only as useful as their database, so we hope to see it updated regularly. We can't be sure how effective it is, but we can say that about all antivirus apps. To clarify some confusion about the prior sentence, we have no way to test against millions of infections effectively, and new ones appear every day. Most of these tools can clean some that others can't. Hence, it's another scanner from a reputable company that might remove something your other tools can't and vice versa.

eScan does have a link to buy their products and a nag screen on exit. We just felt this was more subtle than most and didn't deserve to be tagged as Ad-Supported, so we opted to leave it as Freeware.

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