When Microsoft’s monthly security patches come down, if you’ve ever clicked on the button to see what it’s installing, you may have noticed the Malicious Software Removal Tool.
If you’re wondering, it’s a rudimentary antimalware tool that removes selected vermin from your system. It doesn’t remove all known malware. And I don’t know exactly how Microsoft decides what to remove and when. But given the number of people who don’t run any kind of antimalware software, it probably seemed like a good idea when they rolled it out in 2005. And in the first 15 months they pushed the tool out with the monthly patches, it removed 16 million instances of malicious software. Not bad.
The tool has some power that you can unlock that normally isn’t exercised when you do your monthly updates.
Note: In a corporate environment, you may not get the Malicious Software Tool automatically if you’re managing Windows updates yourself. Microsoft has instructions for deploying it to your enterprise.
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