SUPERAntiSpyware Professional Edition 10.0.1260

Overview

In today’s cyber-world there are thousands of malware that won’t spare your system if they find it vulnerable. You need to be prepared and prevent them from making their way into your computer, but even if they do, you must be in position to get rid of them before they create irreversible damage. SUPERAntiSpyware Pro is one of the most respected anti-malware tools that guarantees a high level of security and lets you surf the web without worries. A few of its special features are real-time blocking, first chance prevention, registry protection and daily definition updates.

Installation

When you launch the installer you’ll asked whether you want to perform Express or Custom Install. Choose Express if you’re a novice since it applies the default settings and options during installation, or Custom if you want to review the settings yourself. Those include enabling automatic updates, checking for recent definition database updates and submitting a system diagnostic to help identify potentially harmful software.

Of course it would be very ironic for SAS to have viruses in its setup package, but the disbelievers can take a look at our virus scan reports. No additional 3^rd party software is included either. For those that are interested, a portable version of SAS is available too.

Supported operating systems are all versions of Windows.

Interface

The program’s interface is not hard to get used to, and it’s also nicely organized so that you don’t have to look for any of its features. At the upper part of the window is located a big button, which is used for initiating a system scan. Next to that button you can select the desired scan type: Quick Scan, Complete Scan, Critical Point Scan and Custom Scan. There is one more option as well (“Enable Rescue Scan”) but it should be checked only on highly infected systems. Moving lower on the window you can see two panels, one for making certain settings and navigating to the preferences screen, and one for viewing information regarding the program’s version as well as checking for updates.

At the bottom of the screen there are 4 more buttons: Manage Quarantine, View Scan Logs, Repairs and Help. In version 5.7 these key tools, quarantine management, scan logs, repair features, task scheduler, are found in one place in order to provide a much cleaner interface and a faster way do access them. You can access them by hitting the "System Tools & Program Settings" button.

When a scan is taking place, you can see the items that are currently being scanned at the top, a list of the infected items below and on the right hand side, information about the objects scanned and the number of threats detected.

Pros

The main improvement in version 5.7 is the newly added ability to find and identify potentially unwanted programs and securely remove them.

The version 5.6 update is a huge improvement, since it reduces scan times without affecting accuracy, has better real-time protection, includes bug fixes and many more enhancements.

There are four scan types depending on your needs and available time: Quick, Complete, Custom and Critical Point Scan. Quick mode scans the most common locations that malware hide in, Complete mode scans the entire system and as for the Custom mode you manually choose the locations to be scanned. Critical Point Scan is similar to Quick Scan since it also scans the most common places for malware, however it finishes faster.

All storage devices and items in a computer can be scanned: Hard Drives, removable devices, files/folders, registry entries and memory objects too. You can exclude certain directories or folders from the scan as well, if you wish.

If you’re running Windows XP or earlier, then you can enjoy one more feature called First Chance Prevention. It is an interesting feature of the program that examines several critical points of the system during startup and shutdown to ensure that no threats infect your system. Users with Windows Vista and later don’t need this function due to security features of the OS itself, thus it’s disabled.

Furthermore, clicking on the “Repairs” button will take you to a screen with plenty of different issues that you might be experiencing and gives you the chance to fix them with just a single click. Some of these issues are: “Enable Start Menu Run”, “Enable System Tray”, “Enable Task Manager”, “Home Page Reset”, “Repair broken Network Connection (WinSock LSP Chain)” and “Reset Winlogon Shell”.

The Worldwide Threat map is a unique feature which directs you to one of the product’s websites that shows the top threats being detected by SAS and the geographical location of where they were detected. This information is gathered by users who enabled data submission of threats detected.

Last but not least, you can schedule automatic scans to be performed at a time of your choice (once or recurrently).

Cons

There is nothing really that could be considered as a con, although the Help file should be updated because it is outdated currently.

Alternatives

The biggest rival of SAS and perhaps of all anti-malware software is Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (paid). It is actually astonishingly precise in its scans, up to the point where even the most stealth malware cannot escape from it. Nevertheless, there have been many reports that MBAM failed to find malicious software where SAS succeeded; we can’t know for sure since in our tests both software found an equal amount of malware, but we do know that both are very powerful and could be used together without any compatibility issues.

Conclusion

If you want to protect your computer from malware threats then you will have a hard time finding a better software for the job. Grab it and get protected today!