ESET Online Scanner
Review Date : Thu, 22 Oct 2009
Author : Roland Waddilove
The ESET online scanner is an excellent free tool that will quickly and efficiently rid your system of malware.
What we liked:
Based on the same technology as ESET Smart Security anti-virus software, this online security scanner can be used to clean up your PC. Most web browsers are supported and, after a quick download, a smartly designed window prompts you to choose the types of malware to scan for and which drives and folders to target.
You can scan your whole system or just the items you select, and check inside archives, such as Zip files, or skip them to save time. After setting the options, of which there is a good selection, the scanner and malware definitions are downloaded. These total just 28MB - less than half the size of our Silver Award winner, F-Secure - which means ESET starts scanning faster than most of its rivals. In fact, it's well into the scan before others have finished downloading definitions.
After scanning, there are options to either remove all the quarantined malware in one fell swoop or browse the files that have been quarantined and examine the threats that were detected.
How it can be improved:
An option to quickly rerun a scan, instead of having to access the web page again, would be welcome. It would also be useful if you could specify which type of files to scan.
User Reviews
Latest reviews
November 18 20:43
Mr V Kent-Ledger
I just tried the ESET Scanner which you said is a free download, it said I had problems, to mend them I would have to buy a download this is a con!!
November 20 08:39
Robert Irvine, Web User
Hi there,
I've just tested this scanner again to see if it had changed since our original review but it's still free to use.
Are you definitely using the ONLINE scanner that we link to in the review rather than downloading one of ESET's anti-virus programs, which WILL charge you to fix problems?
The online scanner offers a 'Remove found threats' option before you run it which will clean any infected files it finds automatically.
At the end of the scan, ESET does recommend that you buy one of its two security products for future protection but this is optional and, in any case, free 30-day trials are available for both.