Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool
Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool is a freely-distributed virus removal tool developed by Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows operating system. First released on January 13, 2005, it is an on-demand anti-virus tool that scans the computer for specific widespread malware and tries to eliminate the infection. It is automatically distributed to Microsoft Windows computers via Windows Update service but can also be separately downloaded.
The program is usually updated on the second Tuesday of every month and distributed via Windows Update, at which point it runs once automatically in the background and reports if malicious software is found. Alternatively, users can manually download this tool from Microsoft Download Center. It records its results in a log file located at %windir%\debug\mrt.log. To run it manually at other times, users can start "mrt.exe" using the Command Prompt or Run command in the Start Menu. With Windows 2000 going out of support in July 2010, Microsoft stopped distributing the MSRT tool to Windows 2000 users. As of March 2012 it's still possible to manually run the most recent version in Windows 2000.
As released, the tool is configured to report anonymized data about infections to Microsoft if any are detected. The reporting behavior is disclosed in the tool's EULA, and can be disabled if desired.
In a June 2006 Microsoft report, the company claimed that the tool had removed 16 million instances of malicious software from 5.7 million of 270 million total unique Windows computers since its release in January 2005. The report also stated that, on average, the tool removes malicious software from 1 in every 311 computers on which it runs. As of 19 May 2009 Microsoft claims that the software has removed password stealer threats from 859,842 machines.
Read more about Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool: Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words windows, malicious, removal and/or tool:
“But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister’s pale,
And love the high embowed roof,
With antic pillars massy proof,
And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim, religious light.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man’s being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)