Freeware Tools: ClamWin Antivirus 0.98

ClamWin Antivirus is a portable free antivirus solution for Windows PCs. This open-source freeware integrates with Windows Explorer and Microsoft Outlook, schedules scans, and automatically updates virus definitions. It offers good, basic protection without the bells and whistles of premium antivirus packages. ClamWin Antivirus is antivirus software for Windows. It provides a graphical user interface to the Clam AntiVirus engine. ClamWin uses the GNU General Public License. ClamWin Antivirus comes with an installer and open source code at no cost.

Antivirus solutions are much more diversified these days than several years ago, users having the possibility to choose from various products the one that suits them best. ClamWin is an open source virus scanner based on the popular ClamAV antivirus engine.

ClamWin can be used freely from anywhere and any kind of media (PC, laptop or Flash drive), making it a viable solution for the users that don’t want to spend money on antivirus solutions.

For people that are mostly on the road and need a quick scanning solution, the portable version of ClamWin can be of good use. This is more convenient because it doesn’t leave any traces on your computer and can be taken anywhere on a small flash drive.

ClamWin will automatically keep your virus database updated by downloading the latest virus definitions on a regular basis. To improve file scanning you can use filename patterns to include or exclude in your results.

On virus detection, ClamWin can be set to automatically send email messages to alert you of a possible infection. Furthermore, the application is able to scan OLE attachments and macros in MS Office documents.

If you want your scan to be more accurate you can limit the size of the scanned files and even the number, size and depth of files scanned from archives.

Users can also customize the scanning process by choosing to display only the infected files, scan or skip subdirectories and even display or remove the “%” progress indicator.