K7 AntiVirus Plus 14

The main window for K7 AntiVirus Plus 14 has a spare, almost military look, with a brushed-steel background. It reports on security status and offers quick access to scans and tools.

I was somewhat surprised to find that the default settings for an on-demand scan don't include scanning for active malware in memory.

When I ran a full malware scan, K7 detected my collection of malware samples and reported that it needed to launch an advanced disinfection tool to complete the job.

K7's real time protection system kicked in when I opened a folder containing malware samples. Some products wipe out all or nearly all of the threats at this stage; K7 got just 61 percent.

K7 AntiVirus doesn't actively block access to known malware-hosting URLs; that feature is reserved for the company's suite. In testing, it blocked 27 percent of very fresh malicious executables immediately on completion of the download.

The system monitor feature detects suspicious changes to important settings. Here it has caught a malicious program attempting to change the Internet Explorer Search Bar URL.

I ran a sanity check test for false positives by attempting to install 20 very old PCMag utilities. K7 flagged half of them as malware, not merely suspicious. That's really bad.

K7 offers a separate scan for rootkits as well as a vulnerability scan and a scan to detect abnormal changes to critical system areas.

The vulnerability scanner reports on unpatched security holes in Windows and in popular third-party products. It doesn't directly fix the problems, but it does offer links showing how to get the necessary patch.

If you just click Start Cleaning, the Internet Temp Cleaner does its job without showing any detail. You need to click View Files instead if you want to see what it's doing (and possibly fine-tune its actions).

By default, K7 offers to scan every USB drive when you mount it. The USB Vaccination tool will fix any USB so malware can't auto-launch. There's also a virtual keyboard for typing in passwords.

Savvy users can configure K7 to control how USB drives, CD/DVDs, or floppy discs can be used. You can disable any of the devices, scan for viruses upon connection, and limit what can be done with files on the device.