The NoVirusThanks name is a definitely an interesting one, but the protection offered by the program is no laughing matter. NoVirusThanks offers Trojan, spyware, worms, and rootkit removal in a small and efficient program. The program is also completely free and completely compatible with Windows 7.
The NoVirusThanks installation was quick and easy. The download was only 1.2 megabytes in size making it one of the smallest standalone scanners we’ve tested. Also, the download includes the latest definitions so there is no need to auto update after installation unlike other free antivirus.
Since NoVirusThank was just released, the program is fairly basic. Starting a scan is as easy as clicking “Scanâ€. The default scan is a quick scan and scans the registry, active process, and modules. The quick scan isn’t exactly “quick†as the scan took about 25 minutes to complete. During scanning the program used about 10 megabytes of RAM and about 20 percent CPU power. While memory usage is low the CPU usage is an above average amount for free antivirus. This is surprising because the virus scanner is set to scan files that are less than 5 megabytes and only scans well known extension. However, looking at the Windows Resource Monitor I was able to discover the reason for the high CPU usage. The program appears to scan files in a multi threaded fashion which makes it one of the first free antivirus to do this. NoVirusThanks didn’t find any malware on the test system.
The program also offers other ways to customize scanning, one can reduce memory usage (not sure why this is necessary because it is already quite low), scan in the background, and auto update the database. The scanner can also be configured to do a full system scan and has a paranoid level for deep scanning. There is also an aggressive delete option for stubborn locked processes and the option to create a system restore point before anything is deleted. Another nice feature is that the program offers multiple languages; at least 10.
Unfortunately, the help file is quite lacking in detail so this program probably isn’t ready for the novice user yet.
While NoVirusThanks offers excellent scanning, it is still not quite yet ready for mainstream. However, with a flashy website and what a appears to be an actively supported program, better updates will certainly be released in the future.
