Hi,

I just started using ClamWin Portable on a USB stick, and I'm very pleased with it's straightforward design and ease of use.

But it seems that CW only finds and identifies the malware files, and that I must then remove them manually. Is that correct?

Thanks,
p.

You can use ClamWin's General Configuration menu--the Infected Files Option to tell ClamWin what to do with infected files. It comes with a default option to Report Only. You can also choose to Remove or Quarantine.

The default is Report Only so that you will not lose access to your system if ClamWin falsely detects a virus (a false positive) in an important Windows file. If it quarantines or removes such a file, you can lose access to your system. I keep my option set to Report Only and verify all detected files with Jotti or Virus Total--two online scanners that use multiple antivirus programs to scan user-submitted files. If several AVs on Jotti/VirusTotal see an infection (especially a couple of these: McAfee, Microsoft, Sophos, Symantec, or Trend Micro), then I believe it, and I will either manually remove the file or re-set the infected file option to quarantine and re-scan the file/folder and have ClamWin automatically take care of it. I then change the infected file option back to Report Only.

Actually, ClamWin now has some protection against false positives on Windows files for Vista/Windows 7 users.

If you are running Windows XP or something older, you can set the option to Remove/Quarantine if you want to, but you have been warned!

Regards,

Thanks, Bob. That's a very sensible way to go about it. I wasn't aware of those options. I thought it was a very stripped-down version, but it's got a good deal of configurability.

Thanks again,
p.

ClamWin is certainly worth the money! It is fairly simple/uncomplicated for an AV program. I hope they can get an improved version 1.0 sometime next year

If you are on the internet a lot, you should have a real-time AV program, which scans as files are placed on your computer--not just when you tell it to (on-demand) or when you schedule a scan. If ClamWin is your only scanner, since it just scans on-demand, you might be interested in the little free program from the Clam Sentinel project (a separate project from ClamWin), which lets you use ClamWin as a real-time scanner. ClamWin will stilll be available for on-demand/scheduled scans. Sentinel also scans USB drives in real-time, and it has its own heuristic scanner that can identify many viruses for which ClamWin does not yet have a signature. You can run Sentinel from a USB drive (I have done it--instructions are in the Simple Guide with the installed program). ClamWin must be installed before you can install Sentinel.

Clam Sentinel is available at https://sourceforge.net/projects/clamsentinel/ on the web. Read the Guide (especially the section on the heuristic system monitor) before you install Sentinel.

Regards,

Thanks. Good to know, but I'm pretty happy with either Avast or MSE at this point, depending on system resources. I expected ClamWin to be a bare-bones boot-disk type of prog, but it's surprisingly detailed. Very happy to have found it.

p.