The downside of having a popular OS like Windows is that people make virusses and spyware for it. And because you generally don’t know if you’ve downloaded some spyware on your computer, you’ll need software to detect it, and to remove it. One of the best ways to do this is using “Hijack This”, but it is quite hard to use, so you probably want something more user friendly. The problem of the easier software is that most companies only offer some sort of a demo version for free, so you’ll need different programs to find all spyware. This is exactly what Hitman Pro offers.
Hitman Pro offers a pack of free to use anti-spyware software, so you can use all of them to protect your computer. So what’s so special? Anybody can collect free anti-spyware software. Well, Hitman Pro also installs and runs them for you. So you can scan your system with all the anti-spyware applications by just pressing "start". This saves you some time waiting for each scan to be finished, and starting the new scan by hand.
Next to automatic scanning with multiple anti-spyware applications, hitman pro offers some browser security features. These configure your browser in a way you can surf the web in a safe way without letting your browser be restricted in its possibilities. These restrictions work, and it seems that some types of advertisements aren’t displayed anymore in my browser. I’m still investigating if this is due to Hitman Pro.
It also seems possible to configure Hitman Pro in a way that it will scan your computer for virusses. Unfortunately, these anti-virus software isn’t included in the package, and you will need to buy one of the three supported scanners (NOD32, McAfee and Trend Micro Sysclean).
The main screen of Hitman Pro in Dutch (there’s an English version available)
One of the first problems that did come to my mind was that the total scanning time would be long. This is quite true. On my slow computer, it can take up to 5 hours to complete the full scan with all available scanners. So if you have a slow computer, and you don’t want to wait that long, you should disable some scanners. Hitman Pro does offer a solution of its own for this problem, the Expert scan. It remembers threats that were found last time, and where these threats were found. In this way you can scan for recently found infections, which you can remove if they’re found again. This reduces the total scan time to 2 minutes, but you won’t detect new problems. The other solution that Hitman Pro offers, is that it will shut down your computer when the scanning is finished, this allows you to scan your system over night.
So, it sounds great, scanning your computer with multiple, free, applications, but there are some problems. First of all, it doesn’t seem to work flawless on windows XP. When I’m running certain background applications, Hitman Pro seems to halt somewhere in the middle of the scan. Not only that, my whole computer seems to stop. I haven’t encountered this problem on Windows Vista. Talking about stopping scans, it seems that the succes rate of finishing the scan lies somewhere around 70%. Some supported applications start, and don’t start running. Other applications don’t even seem to start at all.
The Expert scan lists some of the previously found dangers so you can remove them
The other problem isn’t really one of the software, but more about that it’s FREE software. The standard settings will start and install some trial applications, which will work for a while, but suddenly stop working, or do scan, but won’t remove threats. These applications will also add some unwanted links to the sites where you can buy them on the desktop. It’s not a major problem, but it will cost you some extra time to remove this software.
In the end, it is a helpful, userfriendly, piece of software that will protect your computer against most threats (which makes it a better protection than, for example, Windows Defender). You do need to look at the settings before starting your first scan to get the best results, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The "extras" like browser protection and the Expert scan really are useful to keep your computer clean and they make this application a must-have for every windows owner. Even if there are some errors that can put your computer to a halt, but I do hope these problems will be solved in the next update.
Evaluation
8/10
Screenshots
Platforms
Windows 2000/XP/VISTA
Links
Website
Download Hitman Pro