Malware comes in many guises and sometimes it manages to trick your virus scanner. An extra scan every now and then is therefore highly recommended. Comodo Cleaning Essentials is perfectly suited for this: the program hunts for active malware and immediately tries to remove it.
Comodo Cleaning Essentials requires no installation, making it easy to run from a USB stick. There are three scanning methods: Smart, Full or Custom. With the latter, you decide which system areas or folders you want to scan. There are also more advanced options that allow you to send the scan, but without feedback from the online help pages you risk getting lost here. If necessary, the program will first update the virus signature database and then start the scan. After a few restarts, the scanning round is over, all malware traces are (hopefully) removed and you get a report. It is striking that such a scan can take a long time, considerably longer than with other antimalware tools. Comodo Cleaning Essentials is essentially an 'on demand' scanner and therefore by no means replaces your trusted anti-malware tool.
Three scanning methods: you choose and then wait (patiently).
Extras
In addition to the anti-malware function, Comodo Cleaning Essentials contains two other options that come into their own especially in advanced hands. For example, there is Autorun Analyzer, which scans all programs and processes that start at the same time as Windows. This tool then analyzes all processes and flags items that are suspicious. You can then disable it if you wish. The other program, KillSwitch, profiles itself as a replacement for Windows Task Manager. It monitors and analyzes all running processes. You can then also disable suspicious items (temporarily or otherwise).
Unwanted blackheads? Autorun Analyzer will expose them.
Comodo Cleaning Essentials 2.4.225190.192
Freeware
Language English
Download 22.4MB
OS Windows XP/Vista/7
System requirements Pentium II 233-MHz, 128 MB RAM, 210 MB hard disk space
Judgment 8/10
Pros
Thorough scans
Very decent startup and task manager
Negatives
Time-consuming scans
No integrated (contextual) help function
Safety
Pay attention: 2 of 42 virus scanners see something suspicious in the installation file. But since there are only two, we suspect that there is a false positive (i.e. a false positive). See the full VirusTotal.com detection report for more details.
