Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Windows Forums member Uvais, who is always on the lookout for other users’ safety on their PCs shares a tool recently released by Microsoft:  Microsoft Safety Scanner, which is designed to work with your current anti-virus software to detect threats and infections on your PC. From the download page:

The Microsoft Safety Scanner is a free downloadable security tool that provides on-demand scanning and helps remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software. It works with your existing antivirus software.

The software is designed to be downloaded for one-time use and expires after 10 days–requiring you to go back to the site and download the latest version with current virus-checking definitions.

You can perform three types of scans:

• Quick – Good for a first run but may not be enough to find an obscure virus.
• Full – Thorough: takes the longest but will find hidden infections.
• Custom – Targeted scanning if you don’t want to include certain files and folders to save time.

I performed a full scan and it took quite a while; however, thankfully, it didn’t find any viruses. If you use this program and it finds a virus, please let us know in the comments.

Download Microsoft Safety Scanner

Download Microsoft Safety Scanner Microsoft via Windows Forums

Note: You’ll need to know if you’re using 32 or 64 bit Windows. If you don’t know, check this guide: Do I Have Windows 32 or 64-bit? How to Find Out

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