MELANCHOLY404 TECHNOLOGY

Maybe you’re the guy who fixes computers or a generous friend wanting to help his less geeky friends. You must be using a USB Flash drive with some most important rescue software. And, one of them must be an antivirus software. It’s one of the most important software you need to have on your external drive. Well, if you don’t have one then here I’d like to show you some of the most used and free portable antivirus software that you can add to your portable software repository.

Let’s dig in.

1. ClamWin

ClamWin is one the most popular portable antivirus software. You can quickly plug in your flash drive and scan for viruses. You get to select which drive or which folder you’d like to scan. There is no limitation with scanning. The real-time scanner is not available. Also, scheduled scan is disabled because that’s not useful in a portable environment.
You can filter out specific extensions from scans and also limit your scan to a given number of files. Also, you can send yourself email alerts if any virus is detected. Most important is that the virus definition database is regularly updated.

2. Spybot – Search & Destroy

Spyware is one of those things that sometimes antivirus software can’t track down. So an antispyware is a must in your flash drive. Spybot – Search and Destroy is one of those most used portable antispyware available on the internet. You can perform a system scan or a particular file scan. Spyware gets quarantined and there after you get the statistics of the scan.

3. Kaspersky TDSSCleaner

Rootkits are one of the major problems in a computing system. Rootkits hide the existence of malware and antivirus software can’t scan them. In such case, an anti-rootkit software is also necessary. Kaspersky TDSSKiller provides the security and prevents the rootkit from exploiting the system. It can remove some of the common and known rootkits that might have affected your system.
You just have to start the scan and it will generate the report. You can change the parameters of scan where you can filter out system drivers and system memory from the scan. Also, you get additional options to check the digital signature of each software.

4. HijackThis

HijackThis finds out if any malware has made any changes in the Registry or in the system settings. It creates a log file and displays which files have been modified. You can then further reset the values that were changed. Along with the software, you get a bunch of tool including Uninstall Manager, Host file manager and Process manager.

5. FileAssassin

You might have come across warning like ‘Access is denied’ or ‘Cannot delete this file’ while performing deletion of files. This occurs when a malware has affected that file and it won’t let you delete it. In this case, FileAssassin can be your rescue. It will not just delete the file but also terminate the processes that were affected by it. You just have to select the file and hit Execute.
If you want to delete the file from the software itself then you’ll have to select the option for it. Otherwise, it will just unlock the file for you to manually delete it.

Did We Miss Any?

These were some of the popular portable antivirus software of each and every group. Right from rootkits to malware that won’t let you delete files. If you think I missed an antivirus that is worthy of this list then do let us know in the comments.