Microsoft this week announced the release of a free antimalware tool called the Microsoft Safety Scanner. The tool – available here is designed to be downloaded and run on a potentially infected computer and it will run a scan for all known malware, virus, or trojan programs. It will remove anything it finds. It’s a 70MB download and runs on Windows XP SP3 and later operating systems.
One of the interesting things about this tool is that it will expire 10 days after you download it – therefore making sure you have the most recent updates available for scanning your computer for anything nasty.
Note – this is NOT a substitute for having active AV software on your computer – it’s an easy way to check for problems on a computer that is suspect.
I’ve run it over my computer this morning and it didn’t find anything… That’s good because I’m already running Trend Micro WFBS 7.0 on this computer – a sign that Trend is doing it’s job in protecting me.
Leave a Reply