Last weekend I had to do virus/spyware removal on my parent computers. They relied on EZ firewall/antivirus which, in my personal opinion, is not so good tool (polite way to say it is crap). But oh well.
The infection – some downloaders, probably gotten from infected flash, a backdoor, adware which caused explorer to crash each couple of minutes. That is a very nice and common mix. This provided an opportunity to check some Free spyware removers in real life situations. Free, as I am a greedy bastard and do not want to pay for an unproved solution.
I have tested couple of programs in process. So, in order:
SuperAntiSpyware : Poorest. Detected some popuper but failed to remove it – it removed single file only and couple of registry entries. The infection was still there. Perhaps it was a new kind of infection. As the problems persisted, i had to look at other solutions.
MalwareBytes anti-Malware. Did much better. Found more parasites, and better removal process. It is one of the few removers that have very good free version, is fully updated, but still manages to leverage the features so their paid version is even more usefull. And it is better than most of the free removers by far.
Free edition of SpywareDoctor. Now we are talking. Downloaded it from google pack, and it still found the infections after mbam and superspyware. Not many, but still… Also, they found and stoped one backdoor parasite that was left unnoticed by mbam. And if you wanna nice interface + huge database of parasites, probably it’s the remover of the choice. The drawback – full version is not free, and it does not support my 64 bit Vista system. Thats a thing they should work, or they will loose market share in the future.
So whats next? As i can not look after the PC for my parents on daily basis, I left SpywareDoctor installed, thrown out EZ antivirus, and installed NOD32 – antivirus of my choice, free trial. Probably will purchase a license for my parents or will look for another free antivirus.
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