Free Scan Panda Software

By admin • 2006

Get a Second Opinion On Your Current Anti-Virus

ACTIVE SCAN

On the home page of Panda Software pandasoftware.com you will see the offer of a free Active Scan.

If this is the first time you have used Active Scan, it downloads 8 MB of compressed data, followed by updates (our virus enemies are constantly changing and updates come on a daily basis).

To run free Active Scan you may have to turn off your anti-spyware (which I don’t really like doing) and allow ActiveX - this again I always try to avoid.

Active Scan runs in its own window. If you turn on your anti-spyware this new window may be killed and Active Scan cease.

We leave our anti-spyware turned OFF if necessary just now of course.

The scan seems to be quite thorough and reports on any of the following which are discovered -

viruses
spyware
hacking
dangerous tools
dialers
miscellaneous security risks
miscellaneous suspicious files.

It is an interesting exercise to note down the above results, and compare them to the spyware and virus scans from your current security software.

The free version of Active Scan only fixes (’disinfects’) viruses. Any other problems are simply reported.

You will find that Active Scan installs itself in
C:\ WINDOWS \ system32 \ Active Scan
and occupies over 40 MB.

NOTE: we learned, (12 May 2006) that this will shortly be reduced to only 25 MB.

If you see that your security is in a sad condition you will need to decide whether to progress to the PRO version to disable any outstanding malware.

The PRO version is priced temptingly low.

We did not test out this as our focus just now is on free anti-virus software.

FREE ANTIVIRUS FOR LINUX

Panda Software offers a free anti-virus for Linux users.

CONCLUSION

Panda Software offers a whole range of security software for small and large systems.

They may offer free anti virus protection for Linux users, but they do not in our opinion offer truly free anti-virus protection for the typical home PC -:

Active Scan is not free if you wish to fix ALL the problems found;
to have Free Active Scan installed does not mean that it is CONTINUALLY inspecting the operation of your PC;
the other Panda packages are offered only for a free trial period.

Footnote: Panda Software have kindly supplied us with a couple of email releases on free software, and no doubt it will supplement the above information.

Latest 16jul06 - Panda are offering you a full free Beta version of their anti virus for trial.

Revisit - 4oct06
Repeated Active Scan (currently version 5.54)
C:\ WINDOWS \ system32 \ Active Scan still occupies about 40 MB.
For us we were able to scan at about 50,000 files every 5 or 6 minutes.
It was awkward trying to work on something else while keeping an eye on Active Scan as the separate window is not resizeable, and when minimised there is no indication of progress on the taskbar.

TRADEMARKS. “Panda Software” and “Active Scan” belong to pandasoftware.com