It is always a good idea to scan your files (especially the downloaded files over the internet and the USB sticks your friends bring) with more than one antivirus software products. Even if you have one resident antivirus program installed on your computer, you can still add Emsisoft Commandline Scanner to the right-click context menu to give you the option to scan with it.
The Emsisoft Commandline Scanner is a free for personal use and portable anti-malware scanner. It has excellent detection rates. By adding Emsisoft Commandline Scanner the right-click context menu will give you option to scan files, folders and drives with Emsisoft anti-malware. This would give you the benefits of scanning your files with more than one antivirus engines. Here is how :
- Download the Emsisoft Commandline Scanner 5.0 from http://download1.emsisoft.com/a2cmd.zip.
- After downloading the Emsisoft Commandline Scanner, extract all the contents of the a2cmd.zip file to a folder like C:a2cmd.
- Press the keyboard shortcut Windows logo key + R to open the Run dialog. In the Run dialog, type regedit and press Enter. This will open the Windows Registry Editor.
- In the Windows Registry Editor, navigate to the following key :
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDirectoryshell
- Right-click on shell key and select New → Key to create a sub-key. Put the name of the key a2cmd. Change the default value of the newly created key to Emsisoft Commandline Scanner.
- Now right-click on a2cmd key and select New → Key to create a sub-key. Put the name of the key command. Change the default value of the newly created key to :
c:a2cmda2cmd.exe /f=”%1″ /h /q /r /n /a /l=c:a2cmd.log
Change the path to a2cmd.exe wherever you extracted it in step 2 above. The /q parameter puts all detected malware in the quarantine. If you do not want to do anything with detected malware and leave them as it is, then remove the /q paramater. The parameter /l=c:a2cmd.log means that the scanning log will be saved as c:a2cmd.log.
- The steps 4, 5 and 6 add right-click menu for all folders. Repeat the steps 5 and 6 for the following registry keys to add right-click menu for all files and to the drives :
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT*shell
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTDriveshell - You are all set now. Now you can just right click on any file, folder or drive and choose Emsisoft Commandline Scanner to start scanning the selected items for malware.
- When you select Emsisoft Commandline Scanner, a command window will popup and show the scanning details. If you have added the /q parameter in step 6, then all detected malware will be put in the quarantine folder.
If in the future, you want to update the Emsisoft anti-malware’s malware definition files, then you can open a command prompt and give the command :
