E scan?

Anyone ever heard of this program? Here's what their web site says about them.
"eScan 2003 is the latest offering from MicroWorld Technologies Inc. It offers a combination of features to help you fight all kinds of Internet threat."

From what I have read on Majorgeeks.com it says it also helps fight dialers.

Here's another quote from their web site.
"eScan 2003 for Windows receives Virus Bulletin 100% Award on the Windows XP Platform..."

Here's the web page to check them out. http://www.mwti.net/
If you scroll all the way down the page to the bottom you will see a free download in the middle.

I forgot to add it claims to be a partner of M$.

 

There is the odd thread around notageek, worth a look at at http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=8566;start=0

 

Thanks solarpowered candle. I did a search for it but i put a space in with the e and scan.

 

This AV is based upon the AVK-modified Kaspersky engine, so it should be good. Its mail scanner, which works at the winsock level, is also another excellent feature.

Mainly for corporate users, but has some standalone versions.

They brought out a new product line this year, eScan 2003, which they are pushing over the previous versions. These later versions have everything including the kitchen sink. For example, parental controls, pop-up blockers, spam killers and firewalls.

They are moving over to the system suite, where they try and give as much protection as possible in the one package.

For a standalone PC I would recommend eScan Virus Control Edition, one of their pre-2003 versions. This just has the virus scanner with no added bloat. I tried this for awhile just before license renewal time and I was impressed, much more so than with the eScan Pro Edition, which slowed down my machine considerably.

Has not been seen a lot around the testing scene; it has one pass and one fail over at Virus Bulletin ( under MicroWorld) but has performed very well over at VirusP's site.

http://www.virus.gr/english/fullxml/default.asp?id=59&mnu=59

You can purchase 1-3 year licences; and the Virus Control Edition is cheap- $25 for a one -year licence and $43 for 3 years. Seems a bargain to me.

 

Thay also have a free scanner that just a scanner and nothing else. It has no reident or anything like that. Here's a quote from Majorgeeks that the Microworld sent to them.
"Please do take note that eScan toolkit utility is "free" to use and comes with no warranty/guarantee. We will do our best to keep it bug-free and keep it as updated as possible. It will not have any "guard" or "monitor" component (for which you will have to "buy" the regular version of eScan). Do report your feedback and suggestions to the authors. "
You can find the program here also
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=3961

 

Nice find, notageek .

Those who would like but cannot afford a Secondary scanner now have another option.

I presume they offer this to try and draw people into their commercial software. It is a little known AV and personally I do not know anyone in the UK who either uses it or has heard of it.

Although I have some friends who live in Athens and they say it is a popular choice out there. I remember StraightShooter posting something along the same lines. Maybe this is why VirusP used it in his AV Tests?

Should be reliable as based on the KAV engine.

I am going to download and give it a go.

 

Let us know how it goes. It is based on KAV.

 

I tried eScan Pro and compared it to RAV at the time.
This was the first week of June,this year.

With similar settings for scanning, eScan Pro was much slower than RAV with similar number of files scanned.
It didn't run any heavier than RAV though.

I never understood how the email protection worked.
It seems to me that email archives are monitored if you check the related box.

Some of the features of eScan Pro scanner:
Objects:Memory Check,Compressed Files,System Area.
Settings:Heuristics,Reference Analysis.
The regualr Pro version updated smoothly and ran with no problems at all.

I had real problems installing eScan Pro 2003.
I had winsock trouble and notified MicroWorld.
It seemed to conflict with LnS firewall and WinBar.
Their support is very active though.Very good!
I didn't pursue a second trial download.
With KAV Personal priced a bit cheaper than eSCan Pro 2003,I trialled KAV and went with it.

eScan Pro did pass at Virus Bulletin recently and ranked #3 at another test site a few months ago.
So,IMO it's not a bad program.

 

Thanks tester for the info on Escan 2003 Pro. How do you thing the freeware version will fair again BitDefender free as a back up to McAfee?

 

Well Notageek.

Being curious ,I went to MajorGeeks and looked at the free eScan scanner.
I had no idea that eScan had a free scanner available.
I'm thinking I will download it and check it out.

Regarding BitDefender free vs. eScan free;
I did use BitDefender's free scanner for a week or so,but didn't keep any notes on the scans.
I just wasn't impressed with it for some reason.

*A note about eScan free,it only updates weekly or when a new virus emerges.

 

Thanks tester. I didn't see anywhere about when the free EScan updated. I know BitDefender updates daily (not on sundays). Just let us know how EScan does. I was going to Download it but I was a little busy today to download it today.

 

Is this a throw away programme each week that you wish to update it . I am running it now but cannot see how to update it at all. Its nice but would appear that you need to unzip it everytime you chose to run it ? please correct me here if im wrong as it would be a fine free back up scanner .if the above were not the case.

 

Well Notageek,

I downloaded and scanned with it.
There is no install.It's an exe. file that you execute.
*see screenshot below.

It looks like it is a demo of sorts.
It does work.
BUT there are no options for detected viruses.
It cleans/deletes.No user defined options.
I don't like that idea at all!!!!

I did get a false positive which I will post after this post.

 

Hey solarpoweredcandle.

You have this program too?
I agree with your assessment.
I can't find any update tool either.
I think it is a program that you have to unzip(execute) every time that you run it.
I suppose that you have to download the program every week to get the latest detection database?
Too much trouble for a free scanner IMO.
BitDefender free is less hassle and has an updater.

I run KAV Personal 4.5 updated daily so I am very suspicious of eScan free's detection and cleaning of the redlof virus!
Doubt very much that this "virus" got past KAV's monitor especially since every file that I download is scanned by the monitor.
I have all the option boxes ticked in KAV's monitor also.
*screenshot below.

 

scary stuff lol

I had two false positives . I think I shall give it a miss . Not what Im looking for either

looking at your goodly supply of protection it would be hard to see anything would have much of a chance of getting thru anyways (LooknStop 2.04p2,TDS-3,KAV Personal 4.5,eXtendia AVK(non pro),

 

solarpoweredcandle,

You had two f/p's?

From the MajorGeeks page that has the download it sounds like this free scanner is something new and they are looking for feedback.

I suppose that the program when finished could serve a purpose as a free scanner.

I'm going to wait for something better.

I use Fresh Download and it allows KAV to scan my downloads in Mozilla 1.4.
If I can't download something with those programs,it doesn't get downloaded!

 

I'm glad I came here and read the thread before I ended up down loading and trying it. Thanks Guys for the info.

 

Hey guys I was going to post some pretty pics here but got beaten to it.

Overall, I agree with the Tester's thoughts and views and as you will see his results with the scanner are very similar to mine.

Some observations;

1. This free utility is advertised on the main eScan site but when I attempted to download it, after registering, I could not find this program anywhere in the download options, certainly not in the free section. So I downloaded from the majorgeeks site.

2. Zipped download- 3.6MB in size which is unzipped to the C\Documents\Administrator\Local Set\Temp.

3. Places 2 processes in memory; for a total of about 8024VM and 11MB memory. During its scan, there was no slow down on my machine at all.

4. Once loaded you can decide whether to run at startup or not and choose what files to scan. If you do not choose startup you will have to unzip each time, to run the exe.file.

As the Tester found, when I carried out a quick initial scan IT ALSO FOUND TRACES OF VBS REDLOF and said that it cleaned the infection.

 

Using the fuller scan, it then 'found' a total of 5 viruses, one of which is a well-known joke virus in the web-editor 1st page 2000.


I did not like the fact that I had no option to deal with the so called virus infection and that it had renamed the file itself.

At the present time eScan AV Toolkit Utility has the advantage of being a free Kaspersky product.

However there are too many disadvantages.

1. If you set it to load up with Windows, you have to disable your RTM of your Primary AV. In addition, WormGuard did not like it starting up with Windows and you would therefore have to place it in the excluded settings of WG. Alternatively, you have to unzip each time you want to use the scanner.

2. This is a 'bare-bones' scanner with little way to manipulate the settings.

3. This Utility is primarily used as a not to subtle way to push you into buying their commercial product line. As you can see from the main GUI, it has the prominent to buy box, and even when you come to exit the program, the to buy window comes up again.

4. Will it update regularly. I could not see any where to try and update the program, but I think it may try and update in the background. One of its processes did try and connect to the internet itself when I was testing out the program! The other way of course it that they release a completely new version each time, but downloading 3.5MB regularly will be a pain.

5. Will it use the new KAV 5 engine that is due for release?

This Utility has potential, but is too much of a hard sell for eScan's commercial product line.

It would be of interest if some other people test out this program to see whether they find a number of false positives, PARTICULARLY THE TRACES OF VBS REDLOF.

I have had AVP 3.5, NOD, F-Prot for Windows and Dr Web on this box in the past 3-4 months ( I cannot stop tinkering ) and none of them reported any virus infection apart from the false positive with the web-editor.

They need to remove the to buy boxes and the possible 'scare' tactics to attract people to this product. And I see no overall advantage of this utility over any other free AV at present. I would not recommend this as your only AV tool or to newbies as the number of false positives it seems to flag would give a misleading picture of your machine.

The only advantage( to eScan) is that it will push you to a better AV product( the paid versions). If you have KAV or KAV-like clones installed then this scanner is even more reduntant.

Overall, let's say it needs some tweaking. But it's early days yet, particularly if we send some feedback to the powers that be.

 

Just a few observations:

- This free tool is quite slow on scanning, much slower than other KAV based solutions.

- Updating can be done manually as it uses the KAV bases; one might consider writing a wget script for it. In fact if you have KAV installed on your setup, escan uses the KAV bases folder instead of the bases in the zip file.

- The lack of cleaning options is a big minus; at least an option to have it just detect would be good.

Overall, nice idea, but needs some refinement. I suggest you try antidote superlight as an alternative. Free, rather quick in scanning and just detecting, but shares the same "conceptional" issue of being a throw-away program updated once a week.

The link is: http://www.vintage-solutions.com/English/Antivirus/Super/index.html

PS: Yes the website looks strange and says that they are reconstructing...for more than a year now. But the program itself has worked fine for me for quite some time.

 

Karl and Robert

Did it find traces of VBS Redlof on your system?

As with Tester, I find it hard to believe that my other scanners did not find this well-known virus.

Just wondering whether it flags this on all systems so trying to push you to their paid versions, or whether this was a genuine catch.

 

Blackcat,

there's an ini file in the package (don't remember the exact name) which lists the registry entries ecan considers to be traces of redlof...maybe this will give you a clue of what it thinks are "traces of redlof".

Oh, and no, it didn't find any traces on my system.

 

Hmmm I tried an evaluation of an older (non 2003) virus scan and it brought my system to a halt nearly, scans found nothing and removed as quick as it took to install.

 

Excellent write-up BlackCat!

I bailed on the program before it could complete a full system scan.
Who knows what it would have "found" on my computer!
I dumped it already.

 

Well so far the Tester and I had apparently traces of Redlof on our systems, but Karl and Robert did not. Hmmmmmmm.

So it probably does not falsely flag all systems?

But overall, probably not recommended at the present time.

Karl, I ditched the program so I could not check the ini file.