Get them before they get YOU (Moosoft The Cleaner)

Member Name: Del_Boy

Product:	Moosoft The Cleaner
Date:	15/01/02 (1463 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Detects and destroys trojans, Quick, Easy to use and install

Disadvantages: Costs money after initial trial

Chances are if you download programs and files from the Internet and/or from file sharing programs you will be aware of the importance of making sure you have adequate Virus protection. However many people are still not aware that they should also use something to check for Trojans also.

The Cleaner is widely regarded as one of the best products to use in order to detect these Trojans, I will explain further about the product in this opinion.

First of all:

I already use a fully up to date Virus checker, why use a Trojan cleaner also?
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Some Trojans will be picked up by conventional Virus Checking software but, only a small percentage will be, and those will generally be the better-known types. As such a Trojan scanner is in my opinion an indispensable utility to use.

What differentiates a Virus from a Trojan?
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Well both can do extreme damage to your computer that is for certain. The differences tend to be that Trojans don't replicate themselves such as viruses do. Instead they are often hidden inside other pieces of often-benign software, which is where they gained the names Trojans; as in the Trojan Horse of Troy.

A type of Trojan for example could be a program obtained from a file-sharing program such as Morpheus that purports to get rid of Computer Viruses. Instead of doing this, it will instead introduce a Trojan into the system.

Trojans have numerous effects, more of which shall be covered later in this opinion via use of examples.

Why use The Cleaner then?
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I believe that The Cleaner is the best Trojan scanner and cleaner available. It is constantly being updated and is easy to use and can be used to scan on right click and selection demand rather than constantly monitoring your computer. Though the latter is still an option if you prefer it.

Insta
lling The Cleaner
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Installing The Cleaner is simplicity in itself; simply double click on the setup icon. Then follow any prompts.

The Cleaner installed and ran without a hitch on both my old Operating System Windows 98 and my new one Windows XP Professional.

The Interface of The Cleaner
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The interface that The Cleaner uses is simple and is very easy to use. All options are fully labeled and have icons.

Setting up your desired options
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General
~~~~~~

Simply clicking on the options setting icon or taskbar menu will give you another box with several options, which are:

~Show splash screen at startup ~ - Simply whether you want The Cleaner picture to show on startup, you can turn this off if needs be without any side effects

~Scan Floppy Drive at startup ~ - If you don't use Floppy Disks then you can turn this option off. Even if you do I recommend you disable this as it can prove an annoyance

~Run TCActive at startup ~ - Enables you to turn on or off TCActive on System Startup; I will explain more about this setting in the relevant section

~Run TCMonitor at startup ~ as with TCActive I will explain further in the relevant section

Scanning
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This section enables you to choose file types that should be ignored when scanning. I recommend that *.mp3 is not scanned, as these types of files are not executable and as such can't transmit viruses or Trojans. This will save a small amount of time off scanning, however if you are unsure then don't change any option within this section.

~Scan inside compressed files~

This is an option that should be enabled if you would prefer maximum protection, this will come at the cost of a loss of speed when scanning however, as The Cleaner will scan within every compressed file archive.

~Scan fo
r hidden executables~

This is again something that should be enabled, as it will scan for well-hidden executable files, however again this comes at the cost of a speed loss.

Cleaning
~~~~~~~

~Make a backup instead of removing files~

Will make a backup of any files it considers may contain a Trojan and will enable you to keep it for further examination. This is helpful in the very rare case that you may get a false positive Trojan warning. It is theoretically possible that it could delete a file that doesn't even contain a Trojan, thus ruining the file. As stated however this is very rare, and is an inherent risk with every virus checker and Trojan checker.

~Automatically clean Trojans after scan~

Recommend saying yes, but it's your choice.

Logging
~~~~~~

This section enables you to keep logs of what activities The Cleaner has done. You can choose where the log file is kept and keep a limit as to its size.

Update
~~~~~

Gives you an option to check for updates automatically at startup, I disable this, as I dislike programs nagging me. However if you are the forgetful kind of person who likes being nagged, this option will be to your liking and as such should be enabled.

There is also an option to change your Proxy, this is irrelevant to most Internet Users and unless you know that you definitely use a Proxy server shouldn't be messed around with.

There is also an Update icon on The Cleaners main interface, which should be selected whilst you are online; this will launch Moolive, which will check for any updates to The Cleaner. You are recommended to do this at least once per week. Update files are usually very small.

Scanning
~~~~~~~

After configuring your options, I would advise that you check for updates using the update manager first.

Then you have two windows; one will list all the drives on
your machine. You can select any of these drives to scan by ticking the box next to it.

Scanning will commence and will scan for Trojans at the rate of 80,000 scans per second, according to the help file. I can certainly concur with this, it is fast. It is also very effective and if you have a Trojan you can be pretty much assured that the Cleaner will root out the little bugger and exterminate it.

Please Note: Virus checkers should be temporarily disabled whilst the Trojan Scan is happening, as not disabling it can cause problems such as very slow scanning.

Help
~~~

Simple help file, with comprehensive information about using The Cleaner and all functions and features contained within it.

For advanced users, there are also some command line parameters you can use to add The Cleaner to a scheduling program. Details of these are contained within the help file.

Trojan List
~~~~~~~~

A list of all the types of Trojan that The Cleaner detects. Descriptions are available for each simply by clicking on the name, some examples of Trojans that are listed in this Database are:

FireKiller - Tries to remove all major anti-virus and windows firewall products and damage their installations so that they require a re-install.
ISP Dialer - Downloads software that will use your phone line and run up charges
Death Penalty Suite - (a list of effects below)

Electric Chair.EXE - Deletes all .EXE files in C:\WINDOWS
IownzYOU.EXE - Damages the registry.
KILLREG.EXE - Deletes SYSTEM.DAT and USER.DAT
Poison Gas.exe - Adds a line to autoexec.bat, which formats the HD on restart.
SystemCrasher.exe - Deletes win.ini, win.com and autoexec.bat
TKO'd.exe - Causes the computer to constantly reboot.

Those are just a small example of the types of Trojan that are contained within this database and that are detected by The Cleaner. The Database also states what type
of Trojan it is, such as: Annoying, Destructive, Server etc

TCActive
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This is a program that is included with The Cleaner and can be kept running in the background. If it detects a Trojan trying to run it will alert you via a pre-configured sound alert. It is recommend by the manufacturer that you run this, but I feel that if you practice self hex and scan all the files anyway once downloaded this is unnecessary.

Further details regarding this program are contained in the help file; to explain them in this opinion would be unnecessary. Suffice to say, they aren't needed much.

TCMonitor
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This is much more helpful than TCActive. However I would recommend that this is only used by more advanced users. It will sound an alarm upon any changes to the system registry. However novice users could end up confused and fearful as registry changes happen all of the time with normal usage, such as installing and uninstalling programs etc.

An interesting feature upon running this though, is that it will offer to repair file associations. If the registry has become corrupted or associations have become corrupted for one reason or another this utility will attempt to correct them all.

Also something that should also merit further mention, is the Script disabler, this will disable all scripts when surfing the web:

" TCMonitor can disable JavaScript and VBScript if you choose to do so. That will help prevent trojans that use these scripts." - A quote from the readme file.

However not all scripts are malicious so this could have a detrimental effect on usage. However no harm will be done by enabling this, if it does inhibit your usage of certain sites then you can simply disable it.

How to obtain The Cleaner
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can download it from many sites, however due to the nature of this program it makes sense to onl
y download it from known reputable ones.

http://www.moosoft.com is the official site.

The Cleaner is free for 30 days usage, if you don't register after the 30 days the program will not work again until you register. So at that point it would be advisable to either register or uninstall it.

Prices at the time of writing were $29.95 ? support as well as unlimited updates are included in that price.

I hope that this review has been helpful, if I have missed anything out that you would like to know, then by all means please ask me via the feedback section,

Thanks for reading

Kev

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