Your Free Virus Removal

Looking for a free virus removal and scanning tool that you don’t even have to install? How about free virus protection? Free virus removal software? Well, enter McAfee’s Online Virus Scan. With this free virus removal tool, you can scan your computer without the hassle of installing a bloated antivirus solution. McAfee Online Virus Scan uses ActiveX, so it will run on any web browser that can run ActiveX, which to the best of my knowledge is just Internet Explorer.  McAfee Online Virus Scan is for Windows only though, so Linux users, don’t go trying to run it on your systems, while it will run (through a very unstable ActiveX plugin for Firefox); it won’t be of much use. The tool is free to use hence why we called it a free virus removal tool and there is no limit on how many times you can use it.

Let’s talk about using it! Okay, well, since it is a free virus removal tool, you’re probably thinking it’s going to suck or fail. Truth be told, it doesn’t, but there are some flaws which I’ll get to later. McAfee Online Virus Scan as I said before runs an ActiveX script which you must install to use it. The software requires Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or better and you need speedy internet as there are a lot of downloads. Actually using the virus scanner is pretty easy, since McAfee Online Virus Scan has only one real function, there are no fancy options such as scheduling or real time protection, because of that it takes about 400Kb of actual disk space, and the remainder of the program is run live, over the internet. There are two basic ways to run McAfee Online Virus Scan; you can run a full system scan or a selective scan. The full scan will scan your whole hard drive and boot sectors of your hard drive. The partial or selective scan is user controlled and only scans what it is told to scan. I must admit that because everything must be downloaded to the local computer before scanning can commence the online scan is a time consuming process. It took my test box about an hour (with 6.0Mbps service). The final annoyance I found was that McAfee Online Virus Scan will ask you to register at the conclusion of the scanning, but that is of course optional, other than that it’s not bad for a free virus removal tool.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a perfect world and sometimes even the antivirus programs become the target of ruthless attacks! Circa April of 2004, McAfee Online Virus Scan became the target of such an attack, the vulnerability was in the ActiveX control and allowed the attacker to view files on the victim’s computer, how ironic! McAfee quickly fixed this problem once it became known to them and they haven’t had any security problems since.

In conclusion of this article on McAfee Online Virus Scan, it’s great, somewhat slow, and very useful when you’re at an “on-sight” working on your client’s computer and you feel as if their personal antivirus software may have been compromised.  If you are looking for a free virus removal tool on the go this would be a very good option!

Have you used the McAfee Online Virus Scan?  Let us know in the comments below!  I would love to hear your opinions!