Emsisoft Emergency Kit is a portable malware scanner and cleanup toolkit for Windows. It provides a graphical scanner for examining a computer on demand and a command-line scanner for automated jobs. The program folder can travel on a USB drive, so the same toolkit can be used to check different computers without installing a security suite on each one. Emergency Kit is free for non-commercial use.
Quick Scan, Malware Scan and Custom Scan
Emsisoft Emergency Kit’s graphical scanner uses two scanning engines to look for malicious software, including viruses, trojans, spyware and ransomware. It also detects potentially unwanted programs, such as adware.
Quick Scan examines running programs and traces left by malware. Malware Scan extends the search to locations where active infections commonly reside. Custom Scan gives you control over the scanner settings and lets you save those choices for another session. It can also check additional drives for malicious files that are present on disk but are not currently running.
How Emergency Kit handles detected items
Emsisoft Emergency Kit presents detected items as a selected list. You can remove individual items from that selection before deciding what happens to the remaining objects.
Quarantine stores detected objects inside an encrypted container, preventing them from running while retaining the option to restore them. Deletion removes the selected objects permanently. The cleanup process can also remove associated malware artifacts and repair system settings damaged by an infection. If an item cannot be removed automatically without risking system damage, Emergency Kit directs the user to specialist help.
Quarantine can also reverse an incorrect detection. By default, Emsisoft Emergency Kit checks quarantined objects again after receiving new detection signatures. If a corrected signature clears an object, the program can prompt you to return it to its original location.
Detection updates
Emsisoft Emergency Kit’s update function refreshes both the program and its malware detection data. Proxy settings allow it to obtain updates through a network that requires a proxy connection. These updates can be applied to the portable copy as well as a copy kept on a computer’s drive.
Participation in the Emsisoft Anti-Malware Network is optional. Enabling it permits anonymous information about detected malware to be shared with the cloud-based network.
Scripted scans
The included Emsisoft Commandline Scanner performs scans without the graphical interface. Arguments select disks, folders or files and can add checks of running programs, registry traces and archive contents. Archive scanning covers formats such as ZIP, RAR and CAB, allowing a job to inspect packaged files as well as ordinary folders.
An automated job can direct detections into a specified quarantine folder and save a text scan log. The scanner also returns a result code indicating whether an infection was found. Scripts can use that result to choose a subsequent action, while the log retains the scan details for review.
