Make Sure You Clean With These Free One-Time Scan Antivirus Tools [Windows]

It sucks to be constantly bombarded by computer-related threats, whether they’re spyware, malware, viruses, keyloggers, or whatever else. A popular way to combat this problem is to install an antivirus solution that sits in the background and keeps you safe. But no matter what resident solution you’re using, it might not catch each and every infection. That’s where the one-time-scanner steps in.

I am a big fan of one-time-scanners because you can scan whenever you want. Instead of being surprised by a system scan that lags everything down, you can plan your activities and fit the virus scan in where it’s most convenient for you. You may not need a daily defender; instead, a manual weekly scan may be enough for you.

So if you’re looking for the best online antivirus scan and anti-malware tools that free can buy, check these programs out. One of them is bound to fulfill your needs.

Comodo Cleaning Essentials

Available on Windows XP, Vista, and 7 for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

As a company, Comodo has impressed me quite a bit in recent years. They have over 30 products that are useful for home use, e-commerce, small businesses, large enterprises, and social media. They cover fields from cloud backup to SSL certificates to Internet security to firewall and VPN programs. If it’s Internet-related, they probably have a product for it.

So you can imagine how unsurprised I was when I learned they had a computer cleaning toolkit. The program itself looks simple, clean, and does what it’s meant to do – scan your computer for virus and malware threats and quarantine them.

Suffice it to say that Comodo Cleaning Essentials is not the best scanner available, even in the free software market, but it’s quick and painless. It’ll detect the most serious of threats, but some of the more mundane ones will slip through on occasion.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free

Available on Windows XP, Vista, and 7 for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Malwarebytes is one of the most popular anti-malware and threat detection programs at the time of writing this article. Every time I search for antivirus and anti-malware related topics, Malwarebytes comes up. I’ve been using it as my primary threat scanner for at least 4 years and I don’t see an end to it anytime soon.

The great thing about Malwarebytes is that the Quick Scan feature is the only scan you need. The Full Scan is, for all intents and purposes, a placebo. If you don’t believe me, founder and CEO of Malwarebytes, Marcin Kleczynski, had this to say in a recent Reddit AMA thread:

We’ve designed the quick scan to detect everything. The full scan is there for people who won’t believe us.

What does this mean for you? You can kiss Full Scans goodbye. No more 20-minute scans! They’ve designed their program to detect malicious threats on your computer all within a 2-3 minute timespan. Color me impressed.

ClamWin AntiVirus Portable

Available on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and 8 for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

According to ClamWin’s statistics, it is being used by over 600,000 people every day. That should be enough proof that ClamWin is an effective antivirus and anti-malware tool. It comes in an easy-to-use installer, or you can use the portable version instead to take it with you on-the-go and use it anywhere. Plus, it’s open source.

Don’t be fooled by its simplistic interface. ClamWin may look outdated, but it packs a potent punch when it comes to finding and eradicating threats on your computer. Personally, I’ve never seen a free antivirus scanner that detects as much stuff as ClamWin does. In addition, ClamWin’s virus and malware databases are constantly being updated, so you’ll always be catching the latest threats.

One of the greatest aspects of ClamWin (which could also be a downside) is that you have to manually scan each file. Of course, you can scan entire directories if you want, but that means longer scan times as it analyzes each individual file. If you only want to scan certain files, though, ClamWin excels.

Spybot Search & Destroy Portable

Available on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and 8 for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

I remember when the Internet was still younger (or at least younger than it currently is) and malware was just starting to wreak havoc. In those days, Spybot S&D was one of the pioneers of anti-malware strategy, and alongside Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D could always be found as a recommendation for virus and malware removal.

These days, Spybot S&D’s performance has fallen by the wayside a bit, being outshined by programs like Malwarebytes and ClamWin. Still, Spybot works well, in my opinion, and the latest version has detected a number of threats that were missed by some of my regular antivirus scanners.

My only regret with Spybot S&D is the lack of a Quick Scan feature. If you want to scan, you need to run a Full Scan, which took 20 minutes on my above-average computer rig.

Kaspersky Security Scan

Available on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8 for 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

Kaspersky Lab is one of the most well-known security developers and for good reason. They’ve created over a dozen security programs that can be used for personal use, family use, and business use. They’ve specialized in it for years, so you can have faith that they know what they’re doing.

Their program packages will all cost you money (as low as $9.95 up to $179.95) but they do offer a free online antivirus scan that will detect and diagnose potential virus and malware threats. The downside is that it only detects–it doesn’t fix or repair or remove the found threats. For that, you’ll have to purchase one of their programs.

Not the best deal in the world, but their scanning program is good and will catch a few things that other scanners might miss. It’s worth giving a shot.

Conclusion

Again, one-time-scan antivirus programs are meant to be used at your convenience. If you suspect a virus-related issue on your computer, you can boot up the scanner and focus your efforts then. It frees up a lot of resources when you aren’t scanning, reducing the slowdown of your computer.

But be aware that using a one-time-scanner places the responsibility of scanning on you. If you let a virus or malware threat reside for too long and you end up in a situation you don’t want to be in (e.g., spyware infection), then the fault is entirely your own. If you accept that responsibility, then the above scanners will suit you just fine.

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Posted in: [Windows],Antivirus,Clean,One-Time,These,Tools

Mount Your Image Files On a Virtual Drive With WinCDEmu [Windows]

Your CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs are rotting and optical discs as such are slowly disappearing from the market. ISO and other image file formats, however, are here to stay and are a good way to back up existing optical discs.

Once the original disc has degraded beyond repair, you can burn its image backup to a new disc. Or you could give your discs and your wallet a break and just read the data directly from the hard drive. But how do you read ISO files?

Enter WinCDEmu, an open-source CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray disc emulator, which allows you to virtually mount image files of optical discs on your computer, to use them as if the physical disc was inserted on a local drive. WinCDEmu is a Disc Image Tool listed on our Best Windows Software page.

Features OverviewRuns on Windows XP / 2003 / Vista / 2008 / 7, 32- and 64-bit;can mount ISO, CUE, NRG, MDS/MDF, CCD, and IMG images with one click;supports data, DVD-video, and BD-video images;offers unlimited amount of virtual drives;drive letters are available when not in use;let’s you create ISO images via Explorer context menu.Installing & Using WinCDEmu

This is probably the most simple tool you will ever install and use. Once installed, you can instantly mount image files. Double-click on an image file and WinCDEmu will load a small ‘mount disc image’ window with only a few options. You can choose a drive letter, select the disc type, disable autorun, reserve the drive letter (keep drive after restart), and let the tool manage drive letters automatically.

Once you click OK, the image will be mounted, meaning it will open as if you were running the original disc.

You can further simplify the use of WinCDEmu. Launch WinCDEmu settings from Program Files or by clicking the … button in the window shown above. Select Let Windows manage drive letters automatically and you won’t see the Mount a disc image window again.

If you do want to see it again, right-click the image file and click Select drive letter & mount.

To increase safety, you can also check the option Require administrator rights (UAC) to mount an image.

To unmount an image, go to your Computer, i.e. where you see the list of devices with removable storage, right-click on a mounted image, and Eject.

To create an ISO image from an optical disc, insert the disc into your optical drive, right-click the disc in the list of devices with removable storage, and select Create ISO image from the menu. Choose a storage location on your hard drive and WinCDEmu will begin to save an ISO file. While the file is written, you can adjust some settings.

How Does WinCDEmu Compare To Virtual Clone Drive?

I recently reviewed Virtual Clone Drive, a similar tool, which also made our Best Windows Software page. The two programs essentially do the same thing, but slightly different. Virtual Clone Drive differs from WinCDEmu in that it offers a System Tray icon, through which you can mount and unmount images.

Virtual Clone Drive also lets you pre-mount virtual drives without content to reserve drive letters. What Virtual Clone Drive does not support is creating ISO images.

Conclusion

WinCDEmu is a straight forward and simple tool to create and mount disc images on your Windows computer. Once installed, it simply works and you won’t even notice it’s there. If you still want to look into alternatives, have a look at the following articles:

No DVD Drive? No Problem! Create And Mount ISO Files For Free With These Tools3 Free Alternatives To DAEMON Tools For Mounting Image FilesHow To Create Disk Images & Mount Them On A Virtual Drive [Windows]

How do you manage your optical discs? Have you discovered the benefits of image files and virtual drives, yet?

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Posted in: [Windows],Drive,Files,Image,Mount,Virtual,WinCDEmu

Scanner's Charts Can Save Your Disk From A Low Space Catastrophe [Windows]

I’m a person who is very conscious and concerned with my available disk space. As someone who has experienced catastrophic performance issues due to not even having enough disk space for disk defragmentation to work properly, it’s something I find hard to forget. In other articles, you may have noticed the screenshots where I highlight the size and available space remaining on my local drive. I always have low disk space. I’m a hoarder.

When I’m not hoarding and saving everything I come across, I’m looking for quality disk visualization software (such as DiskSavvy). I’ve tried probably a dozen of them and none are easier and more straightforward than a little tool I’ve found called Scanner. Let me show you just what Scanner is capable of.

Scanner – Free & Portable

First and foremost, Scanner is free, portable, and only 243K in size. This alone should be reason enough to give it a spin, as you’ve got nothing at all to lose. Scanner should work just fine on every version of Windows from XP onward.

Download the archive and extract it to any folder you’d like. Run the executable and Scanner will immediately begin crawling all drives (including external and flash) on your system.

You can interrupt the summary scan (as a scan of your entire system is called, denoted at the bottom left) and scan a single drive just by clicking on it or the blue icon next to it towards the left-hand side of the application’s interface.

As you can see in the screenshot above, I’ve scanned my C: drive. The scan can take a while to complete (depending on your read/write speeds and the size of your drive), but you can see the result: a neat little sunburst chart.

Using your cursor, you can now hover over chunks in the chart and the folder path responsible for that chunk of disk space will be shown beneath the title bar. The largest chunks obviously represent the most disk space. If you don’t know how a sunburst chart works, they layer out from the center. From the middle, the first rung of chunks are folders in your root directory (like “User” and “Program Files”). The chunks on the next rung outward are sub-directories under those respective directories.

At any given time, you can click on a chunk on the chart to bring the focus to that specific directory.

As you can see, this allows you to pinpoint directories and disk usage more finely. On the lower right-hand side, there are three buttons: parent directory, back, and rescan folder. These should help you navigate around.

To the top left of the interface, and to the right of the drive letters, are buttons for zoom effects. Clicking the plus or minus sign allows you to respectively enlarge or shrink the size of the graph.

The buttons to the top right-hand side of the interface will open the Programs and Features window within Windows or empty your Recycle Bin.

That really caps off the features for Scanner, but if you’re a visual person (like I am) then you can fall in love with understanding your disk space in this way. In one quick glance you’re able to see directories that are responsible for holding the most space on your disk. No numbers involved, just a visual. Clicking through the chunks is, in my opinion, always an easier way to detect over-sized folders versus looking at flat numbers.

Scanner proves that you don’t need a Swiss army knife just to clean up a bloated disk and deal with low disk space. Launch the application, hover and click through your largest visual chunks, and it’ll be practically impossible to miss a folder that shouldn’t be as big as it is.

What do you think of Scanner? Is it too simple or does it get the job done just right? Let me know in the comments!

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Posted in: [Windows],Catastrophe,Charts,Scanner's,Space

What Are Environment Variables- How Can I Use Them? [Windows]

Cada agora e então eu vou aprender uma pequena dica que me faz pensar "bem," se eu sabe-se que há um ano, então ele iria me salvou horas de tempo. Eu me lembro vividamente aprendendo a usar o copiar e colar funções, tudo na minha, como um miúdo. Era como se toda a Internet apenas tornou duas vezes tão fácil para mim.

Variáveis de ambiente são um detalhe pouco conhecido do Windows, se você é um usuário iniciante. Eles pertencem neste mesmo Reino de economia de tempo de conversação. Depois de conhecer e começar a fazer uso de suas variáveis de ambiente, você vai rapidamente começar a ver quanto tempo e esforço você pode salvar.

O que é uma variável de ambiente?

Uma variável de ambiente é realmente muito simples. Eles agem como dinamicamente chamado valores que pertencem a certos elementos do Windows e seu sistema de arquivos.

Por exemplo, % SystemDrive % é uma variável de caminho do sistema padrão que funciona com todas as versões do Windows. Você e eu, isso provavelmente significa apenas c:. No entanto, existem pessoas lá fora que decidem é necessário renomear sua unidade do sistema. Alguém pode decidi defini-la como a letra de unidade D ou E. Nesses casos, % SystemDrive % retornaria a esses valores.

Como outro exemplo, então existem variáveis de valor discreto como % TIME % e % % DATE %. Eu aposto que você consegue adivinhar quais os valores que possuem.

Por que as variáveis de ambiente são importantes?

Através de cada versão do Windows, as coisas mudam. Por exemplo, no Windows XP seus dados de aplicativo foi armazenados no caminho C:\Documents e configurações \ {username} \Application Data. Post-Vista, agora é C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming. Assim como aplicações sabe onde armazenar seus dados? Eles devem primeiro determinar qual sistema operacional você está, ignorando a possibilidade para posteriores alterações e atualizações do Windows e codificar onde salvar?

N. º Eles usam o % APPDATA % variável de ambiente, que retorna os valores dos caminhos de dinamicamente.

Acho que de variáveis de ambiente como forma de futuro seu sistema e protegendo-o de problemas que codificado valores poderiam causar a ser catastrófico.

Como podem a variáveis de ambiente ser útil para mim?

De todas as variáveis de ambiente disponíveis, variáveis de caminho do sistema podem ser mais útil para você e I. abaixo está um screenshot tirado diretamente da página da Wikipédia sobre o assunto.

A coluna de Windows Vista/7 tem sido deixada de fora para que a imagem é mais fácil de ler. Você pode copiar e colar qualquer uma dessas variáveis de ambiente diretamente no Windows Explorer como um atalho para navegar diretamente para esse local, sem introduzir o caminho completo.

Isso cria uma enorme possibilidade de atalhos de texto-base para algumas das pastas mais importantes. Você ainda pode usar variáveis de ambiente em seus próprios aplicativos que salvar dados no seu computador (se o campo permite-lhe). Esteja ciente de que, se copiar e colar as variáveis, você precisará certificar-se de que não há nenhum espaço antes ou depois.

Muitos de vocês provavelmente usaram uma variável de ambiente sem realmente perceber, provavelmente para acessar seus dados de aplicativo. É bom memorizar algumas dessas variáveis, como eles podem realmente ajudar a navegar através de seus arquivos. Acrescenta-se o tempo guardado. Confie em mim.

O que vocês acham desta dica? Trata-se de algo que sabia sobre ou um recurso que você sempre tenha esquecido? Deixe-nos sabe nos comentários!

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Posted in: [Windows],Environment,Them?,Variables-