Micrsoft is already giving “Microsoft Security Essentials” a top rated Antivrus for free for legit or Genuine Windows 7 users. Now Microsoft released another security tool ‘Microsoft Safety Scanner’, a free tool that will scan and detect malicious software on your system.
Microsoft Safety Scanner is just a security scrutineer of your system, that will scan your PC to detect harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. But you still need an Antivirus software to prevent and remove those harmful programs.
What’s the use of ‘Microsoft Safety Scanner’ is, you can use it as backup security tool when a Security software or Antivirus software installed on your PC fails to detect suspicious programs.
So you can use Microsoft Safety Scanner along with any Antivirus software to double-check your system security status. Microsoft Safety Scanner offers 3 ways of Scanning : Quick Scan, Full Scan and Customized scan.
Although Microsoft Safety Scanner doesn’t requires any installation, but the main drawback of the tool is the files size, which is heavy according my view when compared to other similar free Scanning software’s. For a 64 bit system Microsoft Safety Scanner occupies around 70 MB and for every 10 days you need to re-download the software for latest anti-malware definitions.
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Download : Microsoft Safety Scanner
[Source : MSDN ]
It’s not the heaviest. If you look at Norman’s malware cleaner, it occupies a whopping 120MB.
Hi David,
Generally Norman is for corporate’s, I compared MS scanner with Kaspersky virus removal tool and Avira Removal Tool 🙂
I think this scanner is like a portable version of MSE. Without auto-update & real-time protection. MS already has a malware cleaner called Malicious Software Removal Tool, which only detects certain number of malware. Norman Malware Cleaner & Dr.Web CureIt Free are updated every few days. I don’t know about Kaspersky, but Avira seldom update their tool.
It is really Headache to re-download the whole software again again every 10 days….