How to Use Microsoft Safety Scanner for Windows

Every computer can get infected by a virus or any other malicious program that you are unaware of and these viruses will start affecting your system.

To keep your computer safe from these viruses you can use a virus scanner from Microsoft named  – Microsoft Safety Scanner. This will help you to find whether your Windows computer has malware or not.

Go through this article and get to know why it is important to scan Windows with the help of Microsoft Safety Scanner. And know its features and how to use Microsoft safety scanner?

Virus Scanning

The maximum antivirus program will present real-time scanning, not in favor of malware plus the manual scans in which users can use them.

You can secure your files and the system with the help of real-time scanning, you can also observe the action in the background and it will automatically fix it or delete it any detected virus.

In some of the antivirus, your name of this feature is different it may be on-access scanning, background guard, resident shield, on-access scanning or auto-protection.

The popular scanner which in demand, also called a manual scanner, well those scanners can’t secure your system in real-time but will help your system by finding malware in chosen places on the local hard-drives.

You should know that not all anti-virus program which has real-time and is on-demand will not scan all kind of file addition and file formats by default.

You don’t have an idea about the latest virus or malware, so for that, you need to arrange your anti-virus software to scan all file kind, additions, and formats.

Microsoft presents a free unique virus scanner called the Microsoft Safety Scanner. Now you will see in this article, how to use this scanner and what is it.

System Requirements and Usage

The Microsoft security scanner will run on a computer with 32-bits or 64-bit versions of Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Vista or XP.

To run this scanner you need to be a member of the Administrators group. It will help to scan the computer no matter it starts in normal or safe mode.

If you download the tool it will expire after 10 days. And if you need its help again after some time, you can download the scanner again because it will have updated discovery signatures.

Features and Options

Microsoft Safety Scanner is good for 10 days only if you want to use the Microsoft Safety Scanner in the place of your anti-virus program which presents real-time security from harmful software.

This unique tool by Microsoft is a very demandable scanner that has the capacity to remove the identified malware in addition to the following features and options:

• Virus, spyware and other capable, not needed software can be scan and removed from the computer.
• There are different types of scans like quick scan, full scan or customized scan.

• No matter what type of scan it is, it will check at critical areas in windows where there are maximum chances to find malware, and it will also help to add or change your files and settings.
• The Malware Safety Scanner and Microsoft Security Essential use similar malware detection signatures and scan engines.

• There is an option to scan any hard drives joined to the computer, removable or USB drive, such as local.
• The scanner will help to remove the identified virus automatically from your system.
• You can also see the list of identified malware and the action to remove the virus. It will you to see what is partially removed or removed.
• The whole activity log of the tool can be found in the debug folder of the main windows directory.
• Identified doubtful files will be sent to Microsoft for more analysis. Well, this process is optional that means it’s up to you to send the selected file to the vendor, but you should send the file to help improved future detections.
• It can scan the computer in safe mode and normal mode no matter the network is available or not.

On the downside, the options and features listed below are not available in the Microsoft Safety Scanner:

• Once the scanning is started it can’t be paused, it can only be canceled.
• The anti-malware signature of the tool can’t be updated.
• No option is available to right-click a folder or drive to scan with the help of a free on-demand scanner.
• This tool can’t scan the networked computer.
• Choosing action to take on the identified viruses, this type of option is not available.
• It can’t help to remove damaged compressed or archived files.
• You need to create a restore point before the use of a virus scanner because the restore point is not available during a malware removal using the tool.

How to Use Microsoft Safety Scanner in Windows?

For using this tool you don’t have to remove your present anti-virus security software from your system and no user interface is needed to remove the malware, apart from this identified malware is compressed.

This tool is very easy and simple in use. Below there is an image (screenshot) of the scanning process and malware removal results.

To remove the partially removed virus forever from your system, check the msert.log file from the C:\Windows\debug folder. place the following line and manually remove the file mentioned:

Operation failed (code=0x8026), please use a full antivirus product ! !

You should be aware that the on-demand scanner needs up to 1GB of memory mainly if it’s scanning huge and compressed files.

In the window’s the task manager will disclose two processes with the same name (msert.exe) which is by design. Microsoft Support Emergency Response Tool is also the name of the process.

If malware is running any active process then the scanner will close it whiles the malware removal process. In the image (screenshots) below, you will find how the tool can efficiently remove active malware.

Is the Microsoft Safety Scanner legitimate?

Yes, the Microsoft Safety Scanner is legitimate. It allows users to select which threat they want to get rid of, contains scanning options. Though it does not update automatically, still it is capable to maintain the computer security.

Does Microsoft Safety Scanner remove malware?

Yes, of course. Microsoft safety scanner does remove malware and other unwanted programs that infect your Windows system making it malware-free to perform tasks without any interruption.

Conclusion

Here I have stated how to use Microsoft safety scanner along with its features and system requirement that will help you to remove viruses and malware from your system.

As this virus scanning tool gets expiry after 10 days so, to keep your Windows PC virus free you can also try the Spyhunter Tool. This tool will help you in making your Windows PC virus-free and reduce the chances of getting infected by any malicious programs.

I hope you liked this article and it helped in guiding you, how to run Microsoft safety scanner and solving your queries.