Windows Malicious Program Tool Remover

[Corona]

I mean Remover Tool. That's what I think it's called. Has that thing ever removed a malicious program for anybody yet? They always tag it onto the Tuesday Update downloads, and you'll notice it takes almost 10 times longer to install than anything else the update has. What does it actually do? I have Avast and MBAM. Those programs have actually caught and removed junk.

[Andavari]

It's never detected anything on your system if after restarting Windows after Automatic Updates it doesn't present you with a removal log.

 

You can see what it is by clicking:

Start->Run->MRT.exe

 

You can learn of it's command line features by clicking:

Start->Run->MRT.exe /?

 

Immediately after restarting Windows after Automatic Updates open the log file by doing this:

Start->Run->Notepad.exe "%windir%\Debug\mrt.log"

 

You need to open the log before running CCleaner, as CCleaner will delete the log!

 

Automatic Updates runs it in Quiet mode, therefore it may seem like it's taking a long time to install, but instead it's just doing a normal quick scan in the background.

 

Although it's a nice cleaner to have run once per month, it's nothing like having consistently updated anti-malware on a daily basis like antivirus, MBAM, SAS, etc.

[Corona]

Start->Run->Notepad.exe "%windir%\Debug\mrt.log

In all its restart instances, no bugs found.

 

So I'm clean according to that. Still the question remains, what help is it compared to MBAM, etc.? Minimal at best? And yet they still force us to install a new version every Update Tuesday. I give them credit for trying, but results are what really matters. What do they cover that MBAM wouldn't?

[Corona]

Nice of Windows to keep their important anti-malware app hidden within their Run feature. That way I guess nobody on the street can really complain about it.

[Andavari]

I'm not going to comment on how good it is, or isn't because I don't know.

 

You can read about it officially here.

[hazelnut]

There are people who use no malware prevention at all but have Windows updates on (as they don't know how to turn it off)

 

So it helps removing things like Blaster, Sasser, Mydoom and even some Conflicker versions and prevents it spreading.

[Corona]

So it's like a hidden, built-in antiDarwinAward app for the huddled masses.