Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.1.0.42

[Note: this review was written by my friend Mohammed Raei from Amman, Jordan; see his personal blog here - The Freewaregenius]

AVG Anti-Rootkit Free is a program that scans your computer for rootkits and removes them.

Trojans, keyloggers, and worms can sometimes hide from conventional Anti-virus software inside "rootkits", rendering them useless in the face of such threats. This is where AVG Anti-Rootkit Free comes in. This is a very small and fast program that you should run before you do a virus scan, because virus killers do not detect or protect from rootkits. Once you ensure that your computer is free from rootkits your antivirus software can take it from there and prevent the installation of future rootkits.

I was able to run a standard scan in under 4 min and an in depth scan in about 14 min on my 5 years old Athlon XP 2000. I was not able to find any rootkits on my system, so I cannot comment too much on its efficacy. Suffice it to say that I now feel much more confident that my computer is free of rootkits than I was before.

This program lacks any sort of scheduler because in theory, you only need to run it once. That being said, it would not hurt to run it every once in a while. Make sure to manually update the program first as it does not auto-update.

Compatibility: Windows 2000, XP

Go to the program page to get the latest version (approx 120K). Also visit the program home page.