Panda Cloud Cleaner

If you put off installing antivirus software until after your system is pwned by malware, you may find yourself in a bind. Some malicious programs target antivirus installers, preventing you from installing protection or running a scan. Others, called ransomware, take over the whole computer and demand money before they'll release it. The free Panda Cloud Cleaner is specifically designed to address those situations, clearing out problem malware and allowing you to install ongoing protection. In testing, though, its aggressive cleanup techniques did some collateral damage.

When you visit the product's webpage (www.pandasecurityusa.com/tools/) you get some clear choices. If you're able to boot your system to Windows, it suggests the regular Panda Cloud Cleaner or, for experts, a portable no-install edition. If you can't boot Windows, or if ransomware has taken over, it offers two bootable solutions, Panda Rescue USB or Panda Rescue ISO. One or the other of these should get your system back in working order.

Quick, Simple Install and Scan
The product installs very quickly and launches right away. With one click you can accept the license agreement and begin a scan. The scan itself is quite a bit quicker than most full-scale antivirus products. In my testing it averaged about ten minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less.

On completing the scan, Cloud Cleaner summarizes its findings in three categories. The most importants is "Malware & PUPs Found," where PUP stands for Potentially Unwanted Program. It also notes how many "Unknown Files & Suspicious Policies" it found. Malware often disables Task Manager, REGEDIT, and other tools?these changes are suspicious policies. Finally, the scan also offers "System Cleaning," checking for useless items, or traces that could reveal your browsing and computer use history.

You could just click "Clean" at this point, but it's wise to dig into the details, especially if any of them report something like "Clean 8 of 10 elements." In some cases I found that it detected PUPs but didn't check them for cleanup, and in every case it found more system cleaning items than it would clean by default.

In almost every case, Cloud Cleaner wanted to reboot to complete the disinfection process. With or without reboot, at the end of the process it asks whether you're satisfied with its work. You can click thumbs-up for yes. If you choose no, you can further specify that it took too long, it failed to remove malware, or "other."

Trusted Boot
Cloud Cleaner's trusted boot mode is designed to handle malware that resists removal by normal means. You enable it by clicking "Advanced options" on the main window, which warns that you'll need three reboots to complete the process.

The first step is for Cloud Cleaner to install special drivers and reboot the system. According to my Panda contact, this effectively virtualizes all of the PC's resources. After reboot it runs a full scan and reports a slightly different trio of findings: Malware Found, Unknown Files and Anomalies, and System Cleaning.

After cleanup, it reboots to finish the process. Finally, one more reboot is needed to remove the special drivers and apply the virtualized cleanup to the physical system. It's a little more complicated than the basic scan, but still within the ability of any user. Even so, Panda doesn't recommend using this mode unless it's actually needed.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/bYgDAbz4uHw/0,2817,2423715,00.asp

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