You must always have a portable antivirus at hand because, if a computer is infected with a virus, it can become the only program capable of performing an antivirus scan to cure the PC and eliminate the effects of a malware . Often, in fact, the normal antivirus that protect Windows in real time, when a virus manages to enter and run, one of the first things it does is to disable the antivirus and make it ineffective. A portable antivirus can be run without installation even from a USB stick so the virus cannot make it ineffective.
Keeping an antivirus portable on the USB stick is also allows you to always carry a program to scan files and check if they are good when using another person's computer or a public pc.
In this article we see the best free portable antivirus including ClamWin which is also opensource. Some of these scanner programs, already described in several posts in the security section, should always be kept for emergency scans when normal antivirus seems blocked or not effective.
1) ClamWin is a free and open source historical antivirus that has always lacked real-time protection. In order to keep an emergency scanner, however, ClamWin becomes an important tool, especially in its portable version downloadable from the PortableApps website.
When starting ClamWin you should always check for database updates to download the latest virus definitions.
With ClamWin you can scan programs running in memory (very fast) and scan specific files or folders. In the main window you can also select an entire disk drive (for example C), a specific folder or even a single file to be scanned. You can also set filters to exclude certain types of files from the scan and make it faster.
If a virus is detected during the scan, there are three options: quarantine, reporting or removal.
2) SuperAntiSpyware is one of the best programs to remove malware and spyware from the PC, very useful in the portable version to scan when other programs no longer work.
3) herdProtect, scanner that uses more than 60 antivirus engines, described in another article.
4) NoVirusThanks for fast scanning of malware and viruses can also be downloaded in a portable version from the download section of the program. It is possible to scan the system to look for any hijackings, hijacks, network compromises (with reconfiguration of the parameters to the default values) and is equipped with a behavior analysis technology capable of detecting new and unknown malware even without updates . With "Flash Scan" you can scan your system in about 2 minutes.
5) Microsoft Safety Scanner is the free antivirus scanner of MSE Antivirus, designed for emergency situations when the antivirus installed on the computer does not work. The scanner is portable to be copied to a USB stick and to be updated every 10 days.
6) Portable Emsisoft Emergency Kit is an excellent alternative to Clamwin which detects viruses, malware, trojans, spyware, adware, worms, dialers and keyloggers.
It includes 3 separate tools:
- The command line tool, without graphical interface, to program scans in scheduled operations.
- Emsisoft HiJackFree, to find out what is started together with Windows when the computer is turned on.
- Emsisoft BlitzBlank, to delete files in use, registry entries, drivers and other locked files.
7) Comodo Cleaning Essentials is a great tool to remove viruses and malware because it is not only a scanner but also a program that blocks suspicious processes.
8) Norton Power Eraser is a lightweight and portable tool that can detect and remove viruses, malware or other security threats from your computer. The most interesting thing is that it has a 'Reputation Scan' feature that sends files and folders to Symantec for scanning using the very powerful Norton antivirus detection engine.
9) Zemana Antimalware for fast virus checks on demand, with an elegant interface and works on almost all versions of Windows (described in another post).
10) eScan is another portable antivirus for emergency use. eScanAV Toolkit antivirus is also known by the name MWAV and is a free tool to clean up Windows of viruses, Spyware, Adware and other malicious software.
11) DrWeb CureIT is a little-known program of which the Italian version also exists. The antivirus is paid but the automatic cleaning program is free and portable, ideal for making virus scans on your computer when you have symptoms of infection and the antivirus seems to find nothing.
12) SpyBot is the very famous and indispensable among the best free spyware and malware protection programs.
DI SpyBot is the portable version available for download from the Portable Apps site
Another portable antivirus with scanner against malware and infections is Sophos Anti RootKit
If the PC manages to connect to the internet even if infected, a different solution may be that of online scanners that do not require downloading any programs and do the virus check job directly using one of the sites to do a free online virus scan.
I do not say to keep all these programs in the key or in an external hard disk but I recommend to take precautions and have at least some of them ready in case of emergency.
