One scanner to rule them all

In a way.....

I found this tool while randomly searching for other free AV removal engines, and I happened across this site http://www.freebyte.com/antivirus/

Were I spotted this thing called Handy Bytes....
Some software which takes all of your Virus Scanners and runs a scan with all of them.

One of my first questions is how the hell is this possible in the sense that I don't know if a computer would be able to handle it, because running a single of my AV engines on my computer bogs it down a bit, I've got 512 memory. with a 2.8 processor with XP SP2....might be because I'm running so many processes that much, but most of the time my memory usuage is minimal.

So has anyone heard of this utility and is it any good? It would help me a lot because I've got AntiVir, Mcafee, AVG, and Bitdefender all scheduled to scan daily at night while a sleep, with avast and Clamwin on the side...Clamwin is too dam slow and kills my computer if I try to do an ondemand scan, so I reserve it for backups. If I could combine those four scans into one and maybe add avast it would be most helpful. I'd appreciate and welcome and feedback you guys have. Thanks.

 

Let me know if I understood you correctly, I feel the same, there are some quite very good free antivirus, with advantages and disavantages comparing each other.
I use avast! (I used AVG) and do not regret

 

I think RadicalEdward is talking about this product. It's made by Teknum Systems, there's an old thread about another of their products here, also mentions HandyBits. The verdict: packed with spyware, avoid like the plague.

 

Thanks Meltdown, really we do not need spywares

 

This seemed an interesting tool (all it would appear to do is run each installed scanner on your selected files) but when I visited the site, I noticed that the AGNIS list had handybits.com listed, so was filtering much of the site.

A check though Usenet pulled up this Handybits.com thread from 2002 regarding the update check (see their About HandyBits Update Service for more) and the difficulty in removing their software.

While I don't think these concerns should rule out trying it, I would recommend blocking the update checks with a firewall (unnecessary for this sort of software, just visit their website to check instead) and using an install monitor (like Total Uninstall) so that this software can be fully removed if desired (this applies to pretty much all software though - everything seems to leave debris in the Registry these days...).

It should also be noted that you could knock together a DOS batch file or Windows script file to do much the same thing with a little more effort, though not all scanners seem to cater for this.

 

Oh no I couldn't!

 

Even the freebytes site is not updated frequently, they list NOD as a 2mb download. That was about 1 year and 1/2 ago.

 

Thanks for the info guys. I guess it's not worth the trouble, but it would deffinitely be helpful to have a program that integrated all of your AVs into a single scanning utility....maybe some day.

 

I cannt get in the site??!!