A rootkit is a special type of malware that gains access to the administrator level privileges, takes control of your system and then further infects your computer by downloading even more malware. Such rootkits are not only hard to detect but also very hard to remove. The rootkits cannot be detected using ordinary methods. You can use free McAfee Rootkit Remover to detect and clean any found rootkits on your system. Currently it can detect and remove only ZeroAccess, Necurs and TDSS family of rootkits. But McAfee Labs promises to add coverage for more rootkit families in the future versions.
McAfee Rootkit Remover is available in form of a standalone portable program. The download is a very small file of less than one megabytes in size. It is a command line program but you can just double-click on the downloaded file rootkitremover.exe to launch the McAfee Rootkit Remover. It requires administrator access to run this tool.
If it finds a rootkit (from the rootkit families it can detect) installed on your system, then it will automatically clean it and remove the associated files and other entries. All the progress is shown inside a command prompt window. If it removes any rootkits, then it would advise you to reboot your computer immediately and scan it with a good antivirus upon reboot.
However, if it does not detect any rootkit, then it will just show you a message that No trojan or viruses found!. This is a good news, but since McAfee Rootkit Remover does not support detecting all kinds of rootkits, it is better to still scan your PC with a good updated antivirus.
McAfee Rootkit Remover does not have any options that you can customize the scanning with. It scans for only two families of rootkits – TDSS and ZeroAccess. It is a very simple program for Windows users and you should not depend on it for your security requirements. Hopefully, McAfee would update and add support for detecting more rootkit families in the future. In the meanwhile, you can install a good up-to-date antivirus solution on your computer to stay protected.
Conclusion: McAfee Rookit Remover is a free utility to help to detect and remove well known rookit and malware families from your infected computer. It can detect and remove ZeroAccess, Necurs and TDSS family of rootkits. But if it finds any malware on your PC, then you should scan your PC with a standard updated antivirus solution.
You can download McAfee Rootkit Remover from http://www.mcafee.com/us/downloads/free-tools/.