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[Tabita Knezevic]

I just installed Windows Admin Center and after connecting to one of our servers, in "Updates" category I noticed "Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool". I remembered I forgot to install it and I almost clicked on Install but then I noticed something really weird. It says "Yes" in "Reboot required" column and it offers me "Restart options". My only question is "What the hell?"

Probably not, but yesterday I clicked on Install to see what would happen and server didn't restart after install. But after connecting to it using RDS I still see this update in Windows Update. "UsoClient.exe StartScan" don't change anything. When I clicked on download it quickly disappeared from the list and I'm "up to date".

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool doesn't detect all malwares and it only has list of well-known and dangerous malware and not the entire list of all malwares. Meaning, your system might have been infected with other malwares which are not in the list of this tools.

After the download, this tool runs one time to check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any infection that is found. If an infection is found, the tool will display a status report the next time that you start your computer. A new version of the tool will be offered every month. If you want to manually run the tool on your computer, you can download a copy from the Microsoft Download Center, or you can run an online version from microsoft.com. This tool is not a replacement for an antivirus product. To help protect your computer, you should use an antivirus product.

As it happens, the February update to MSRT's definitions list flagged tools that I had run for years with no problems - namely, the KMSPico activator for Microsoft Office - as being malicious, and removed them from my system without confirmation. In addition to this invasive approach to perceived threats, the tool doesn't appear in Windows Update's Installed Updates dialogue, effectively denying users the right to pass on what is both an invasive and inadequate tool, and it also reverted my UAC settings to the highest level.

What follows is a short guide to undo any adverse effects of the forced update, as well as to disable MSRT entirely, giving you the option of relying on time-tested, dedicated anti-malware and anti-virus offerings. I'm hoping this will hopefully be useful to anyone else adversely affected by the latest update to MSRT's definitions list.

To begin with, open System Restore, and check whether a restore point was created before the Malicious Software Removal Tool was installed. Restore points are usually created by Windows automatically just before updates are installed, although it's possible it may not have done so.

Open Windows Update, and click on Change Settings in the sidebar. In the dropdown that appears, select the option to "Check for updates but let me choose whether to install them". Click OK to return to Windows Update.

WU should have detected that at least 1 "important update is available". This is the MSRT update that you just rolled back. Click on this, and in the screen that follows, uncheck it and any other updates labeled KB890830 that you notice. Then, right click on each update you just unchecked, and click Hide Update.

The final step should be enough to ensure that Windows doesn't attempt to force that MSRT update down your throat again. Note that you may need to do this for any future steps, which is also why I recommend you disable automatic updates as in Step 2, and carefully ensure you avoid installing any updates labelled KB890830.

You can also optionally follow the steps below to ensure MSRT is well and truly dead, but I haven't personally needed to as of yet because the restore point undid most of the damage. If, in the future, MSRT should ever rear its head again, feel free to put the final nail in its coffin by continuing on from this point.

If MSRT is set up to run on your machine, the centre pane should show a task called MTR_HB within the Removal Tools folder, as illustrated above. As far as I've been able to tell, this is the scheduled task that initialises MSRT to be run right after it's updated. Left-click on the task, and click Disable to prevent it from running in the future.

On some versions of Windows, namely 10, MSRT also sends telemetry data back to Microsoft via something called Heartbeart Telemetry. If you're happy with relying on MSRT's anti-virus efforts but want to prevent it from phoning home, here's how.

In the window that appears, navigate to the Actions tab, and double-click on the action ending in /EHB /Q. /EHB and /Q are command-line switches that serve to customise how the Task Scheduler runs a program. In this case, the /EHB switch is what tells it to run the the Malicious Software Removal Tool with Heartbeat Telemetry enabled.

In the Add arguments (optional) field, remove the /EHB switch from the field entirely, taking care to leave a space between the MSRT program path and the /Q switch. Click OK, then OK again on the previous window, before exiting Task Scheduler. You should now have a version of MSRT running that's dead inside - that is, no Heartbeat. :-)

N.B. Note that due to the aggressive nature of Windows' telemetry services - read: how badly Microsoft wants you to report data back to them - this may only be a temporary solution that is done away with in future Windows updates. The only guaranteed method to ensure MSRT won't ever be sending telemetry data back to Microsoft is to use the steps in the first part of this guide to prevent updates from it entirely.

Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT) is a freeware second-opinion malware scanner that Microsoft's Windows Update downloads and runs on Windows computers each month, independent of the install antivirus software. First released on January 13, 2005,[2] MSRT does not offer real-time protection. It scans its host computer for specific, widespread malware, and tries to eliminate the infection. Outside its monthly deployment schedule, it can be separately downloaded from Microsoft.[3][1][4]

Since its January 13, 2005,[2] Microsoft releases the updated tool every second Tuesday of every month (commonly called "Patch Tuesday") through Windows Update, at which point it runs once automatically in the background and reports if malicious software is found. The tool is also available as a standalone download.[1]

In a June 2006 Microsoft report,[2] 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. On May 19, 2009, Microsoft claimed that the software has removed password stealer threats from 859,842 machines.[7]

In August 2013, the Malicious Software Removal Tool deleted old, vulnerable versions of the Tor client to end the spread of the Sefnit botnet (which mined for bitcoins without the host owner's approval and later engaged in click fraud). Approximately two million hosts had been cleaned by October;[8][9][10] although this was slightly less than half of the estimated infections, the rest of the suspected machines presumably did not have their automatic Windows Updates enabled or manually run.[9]

Microsoft Safety Scanner is a scan tool designed to find and remove malware from Windows computers. Simply download it and run a scan to find malware and try to reverse changes made by identified threats.

Safety Scanner is exclusively SHA-2 signed. Your devices must be updated to support SHA-2 in order to run Safety Scanner. To learn more, see 2019 SHA-2 Code Signing Support requirement for Windows and WSUS.

Microsoft Safety Scanner only scans when manually triggered. Safety Scanner expires 10 days after being downloaded. To rerun a scan with the latest anti-malware definitions, download and run Safety Scanner again. We recommend that you always download the latest version of this tool before each scan.

This tool doesn't replace your antimalware product. For real-time protection with automatic updates, use Microsoft Defender Antivirus on Windows 11, Windows 10, and Windows 8 or Microsoft Security Essentials on Windows 7. These antimalware products also provide powerful malware removal capabilities. If you're having difficulties removing malware with these products, you can refer to our help on removing difficult threats.

The goal for this Wiki is to extablish a list of known good tools for cleaning up those pesky malware / virues that haunt windows clients. What tools do you like and what are their strengths and weaknesses?

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows has about 12 different tools for virus & malware removal. The best part of using this boot CD is that it is out-of-band and therefore no viruses on the system can interfere with scanning and removal. You can also install it to a bootable USB stick and keep the definitions updated.

Hello eL_PuSHeR - Thank you for providing us with his little gem. For months now I've been having problems with I.E. 11 randomly freezing and/or crashing, and the usual fixes haven't solved anything. During that time, I was running regular scans with Avast, Malwarebytes, and Trend Micro Housecall. Each of them reported no problems with regard to viruses or malware being present on the system. The first time I ran ZHP Cleaner, it reported a browser hijacker had been installed to the Windows registry and quarantined it. Since then, no more problems with I.E. 11. Thanks again. - Derek

IE can seem delicate/touchy to things being added into it. For instance some legit and clean download managers can add their context menu to IE causing problems with the browser, i.e.; crashing, freezing, etc.

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