Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

I had 5 updates from Microsoft yesterday. You'll all have differing numbers, bu mine was 5. One of these was the monthly MS Malicious Software Removal Tool ( I call it MSRT for obvious reasons). I promised last month that I'd follow up with someI better information about this tool. This is what I found:

Microsoft will only run a Quick Scan with the tool after it is downloaded and installed. This is as I had thought and is why I have always recommended that we all manually run a Full Scan. MS will run a quick scan in stealth mode. You'll never know when it is running and you won't see any output from the tool - unless it finds a problem.

The first thing you should do once you have checked your updates (Check the update history to see if it was installed this week) is  to run a Full Scan. There is a quick and easy way to do this, much simpler than the method I have posted in the past. First click on START, then RUN, and enter MRT (go figure why they left out the S) in the command line then click on OK.

Yes, you can click on that picture above to see the larger version.

In the resulting window note the month in the application banner at the top of the window.

In this case it says July 2010, and yours should as well. Click on Next and then select Full Scan. Just let it run. It takes forever but should not impact your use of your machine. It seems to have very low overhead.

As I post this, mine has been running for over 2.5 hours and it may run a lot longer. I don't care because it is very cheap insurance. Go for it!