Compatible Platforms: Win2k, XP, Vista, 7

Version highlighted in this post: 0.95.2

Portable version: Available at http://portableapps.com/apps/utilities/clamwin_portable

Not long ago we took a look at ClamXav. Now, let’s take a look at the open source anti-virus program’s Windows-based sibling, ClamWin.

ClamWin is the sibling to two other great programs, ClamAV (the UNIX/Linux anti-virus scanner) and ClamXav (the open source Mac AV scanner). Their shared underlying scanning engine is what makes them siblings. The engine is the part of an AV program that tells it what patterns within a file are dangerous and which virus that pattern matches.

My favorite thing about all of the ClamAV-based apps is that they don’t insist on sitting on your machine running all the time. If you’re a power user and tend to be careful when trawling online, why waste the huge amount of resources most AV programs demand when you only need to scan from time-to-time? It’s much nicer to have those system resources open for regular computing and just run the AV program when you feel like you’ve made a mistake or just need to check out a specific file.

There’s one quick caveat that I always have to mention with the ClamAV apps, though. The first time you fire up the program, before you even run a scan, go into the preferences and under ‘General’ make sure you’ve got the radio selection set to ‘Move to Quarantine Folder:’, and verify that there’s a quarantine folder set. If that’s not done, the program will just run the scan and come back and tell you, “Hey, I found something!” But not actually do anything about any of the problem files. (See screenshot below for how I keep mine set up.)