3

Thank you for the welcome.

What’s the difference? Didn’t you read my post?? ;D

Well to repeat it’s more comprehensive than HJT (even if you include the StartupList addon in HJT) and scans more locations.

It also makes it slightly easier to make decisions on what is malicious or not, because it allows you to filter out MS signed files (which is definitely safe, unless someone managed to steal their keys!), and programs that are signed (fairly safe since malware almost always isn’t signed) and finally it can also filter out files that are marked safe on the RunScanner database of known safe files (whitelist).

If you are a guy who just sits there and let a tech check it out for you, it probably makes no difference at all if you use one or the other of course. But for more advanced users who know a thing or two, runnerscanner is much less troublesome to use.

Note, the restore function still doesn’t work, so don’t try anything if you are unsure. Wait until 1.0 which will include it.

In any case, RunScanner has plenty of potential because the author is working actively on it, and has very ambitious plans, I sugguested a couple of functions a while ago, and they are almost all in them now.

Hijackthis is a good solid tool that people latched onto when there was nothing better. It’s very servicable, but recently the author sold it to TrendMicro and while the company has recently released 2.0 free (and from past experience, they are unlikely to charge for newer versions) there are some in the community who are wondering aloud if they should start looking for a replacement (though 1.99.1 is still very usable).

There are other alternatives like autoruns, asquared Hijackfree, Runazlyer and formerly sysinternals autoruns that show promise as well and are still being actively developed. But my money’s on RunScanner.