Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner: Blog

Reset your bookmarks: Windows Live OneCare and the safety scanner, all under one roof

Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:19:00 GMT

Unless you are an avid watcher of the address bar in your Internet browser, you may not notice the big change at Windows Live OneCare safety scanner. But the good news is that we’ve brought the scanner and its bigger sibling, Windows Live OneCare, under one roof—or, really, under one URL: http://onecare.live.com.

Need a quick PC safety scan? You can find it at http://onecare.live.com/scan. But if you want always-on protection against viruses, spyware, and phishing, as well as automated tune-up and backup, subscribe to Windows Live OneCare. You can try it free for 90 days. Check out http://onecare.live.com. The latest release of OneCare is now available in 17 countries and seven languages—we’re listening to your requests, world!

If you have the scanner or the OneCare site bookmarked, your old links will work for a while, but you should update your Favorites list to the new URLs for faster service.

Keeping your PC clean,

The Windows Live OneCare safety scanner team

Now you can scan your Windows Vista beta edition PC

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 20:39:47 GMT

If you're an early adopter of the Windows Vista operating system, we have great news: we've just launched the Windows Vista beta edition of the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner. You can also access it via the "What's new" link on the safety scanner home page. Just like the standard edition of the scanner, it's free, and it does everything the standard scanner does.

The free safety scanner--and its even more convenient big brother, Windows Live OneCare--complements Windows Vista's enhanced security features to help protect, tune up, and clean up your PC and keep it running at its best. Learn more about the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner, Windows Vista beta edition. Or just dive right in and get a free PC safety scan for your Windows Vista PC!

Be sure to let us know how you like it and what improvements and new features you'd like to see.

The Windows Live OneCare safety scanner team

Better than beta

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 22:44:49 GMT

If you’ve visited the site today to scan your PC, you might have noticed some subtle differences—like, say, the name. The Windows Live Safety Center is now the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner. The safety scanner is still free, and you can expect the same great features and continuous innovation to make the scanner stronger, more versatile, and responsive to new threats from viruses and spyware.

In addition, we're no longer in beta! To celebrate, we've made some performance improvements in the scanner and redesigned our site a bit. Love it? Hate it? Please share your comments and feedback with us.

Susan Walter and the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner team

Windows Live Toolbar reminds you to run a safety scan

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 22:43:30 GMT

Forget when you last tuned up your PC? Sometimes we do, too, even here at the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner ranch. But now it doesn’t matter, because the latest version of the Windows Live Toolbar will tell you. You can look to the PC health icon to let you know whether it’s time to run a full-service scan on your computer and to warn you when you’ve surfed to a suspicious Web site that might be phishing for your personal information.

Windows Live OneCare Advisor reminds you, by way of a little yellow shield icon, to run a full-service scan every 30 days to check for viruses, spyware, and other potentially unwanted software and to improve your computer’s performance by getting rid of junk on your hard disk.

But you don’t have to wait 30 days—OneCare Advisor is poised on your Toolbar, ready to give you access to the safety scanner any time you’re worried about exposure to viruses or spyware or if you just feel like your computer is slower than it ought to be.

Alas, while the safety scanner can evaluate the current health status of your computer and fix immediate issues, it can’t protect your computer from threats or problems between scans. For always-on security and regular, automatic PC maintenance, check out Windows Live OneCare, the new PC health service from Microsoft. They’re running a 90-day free trial right now!

As ever, we're curious to hear your feedback! Let us know what you think.

Stay safe,

Stephanie Lindsey and the Windows Live OneCare safety scanner team

So...am I infected or not?

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 20:45:03 GMT

We’ve received several posts lately from concerned users who don’t know if their computers are infected or not by malware or spyware. The confusion seems to come from the scanner informing the user during the process of the scan that something has been detected. However, once the scan completes, the user is shown that nothing has been found on their system. So you’re asking, what’s the deal with that?

Well, this is brought about by some complexities in how we identify detections. Before we dive into the real issue, how about a few definitions…

latent detection – a potential detection on the machine that, by itself, is not enough to identify the machine as ‘infected’; eg. a file commonly associated with spyware is found on the system: think of something like spy.log being located

concrete detection – a positive detection on the machine; which by itself provides ‘concrete’ evidence to know the machine is ‘infected’

So, what is currently happening within the scanner is that we are seeing ‘latent’ detections on the system and immediately alerting you that they are there. However, when we get to the end of the scan, not enough items have been identified to come up with a ‘concrete’ detection. Because of this, we then state that nothing has been found.

We are currently working on getting this resolved for you in an upcoming release - but until then, there is no need to worry. Latent threats are not viewed as harmful to your machine - but rather could be remnants of something that was previously on your machine (but is no longer present). That means that the 'concrete' (or dangerous) part has already been removed - so sleep easy tonight :)

Look for an update to this in the near future!

-Bo Rohlfsen
Program Manager - Windows Live Safety Center

Safety Center Goes Global!

Thu, 25 May 2006 17:59:54 GMT

We’ve received a lot of feedback from you – often from posts on this Space – that the scanner should be available in other languages. As of today, it is. We’ve released the Windows Live Safety Center Web site and scanner into 43 markets throughout the world. So now users in Korea, Turkey, Norway, Spain, and many other locales can run free on-demand scans online.

Go to http://safety.live.com and choose your language from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Then run the scanner to help make your PC healthy and secure—in your own language!

More markets will be added in the coming months. Watch this space for updates.

Scanner may not be able to remove viruses stored in container files in certain folders

Tue, 02 May 2006 21:28:12 GMT

Hello Safety Center Community, recently we've had several posts regarding certain viruses and threats that were detected but could not be removed. Brandon, graciously suggested turning off the Windows automatic restore point and re-running the scanner as a way around this issue. We investigated the solution because it seemed to be working in some cases. It turned out that in cases where threats are stored in the System Volume Information\_restore* folders they cannot be removed unless the system restore service is turned off. To turn off system restore read the support KB article http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310405. If turning off system restore does not work or solve the problem, it could be that the threat is in a container file, we have found that in some cases we are not able to repair threats stored in container files.

Best Regards,

Marisela

Windows Live Safety Center Team

March Beta Update Released

Thu, 23 Mar 2006 00:35:19 GMT

We have released an update to our scanner this week that we believe will resolve the redundant scanning issues and increased resource usage issues that were experienced by some customers since the March release. Thank you all for your feedback and please let us know if you continue to see any of these same issues. We appreciate your participation in our blog and forums!

As always, Let us know how this latest release works for you. We’re actively working on our next release and looking to your feedback to make our product better.

You asked, we answered: registry cleaner and spyware detection now available!

Fri, 17 Mar 2006 19:27:27 GMT

We’ve been busy over here in the Safety Center adding some features you’ve requested. An update of our scanner went live Wednesday, so check out what’s new:

First up: Registry cleaner.

Do you plan your coffee breaks around certain PC functions because it takes so long to do some things? Could be that your Windows Registry database is cluttered with invalid or old information about system settings or applications. Cleaning your registry is easy – either run a full Windows Live Safety Center scan, or for a targeted approach, click Clean Up Scan in the Clean Up Center. For more information on the Windows Registry and why you should clean it up, read this.

Next: Spyware detection.

Another reason your PC might be a little on the slow side is spyware, unwanted software files that can do things like collect personal information or change the configuration of your computer without your consent. This can happen when you’re trying to download something you want, like music, so the key is to read license agreements and make sure you’re not agreeing to something you don’t want.

Sounds like a lot of you are frustrated by this, so voilà: the Windows Live Safety Center protection scan can now detect and remove spyware you may have already picked up. Do a little spring cleaning on your PC!

And finally: Malware submission.

With the latest update of our scanner, we give you the chance to send us those suspicious files so we can check them out and decide how we need to make the scanner better for you. Don’t worry, we keep personal information private, so help us help everyone stay safer online.

Let us know what you think about our latest release of the Windows Live Safety scanner. We’re already working on the next one, and we’ll let you know when it’s ready.

Who's your buddy? Remote PC scan now available in Windows Live Messenger

Sat, 04 Feb 2006 01:02:06 GMT

Do friends and family members call you at odd hours for computer help? Have you ever had the experience of troubleshooting PC problems over the phone? Most of us who know even a little bit about computers know what this is like. Sometimes it goes well. More often, we find ourselves struggling with trying to explain PC stuff over the phone. Once in a while, we’ll get fancy and use the Remote Assistance feature in Windows XP to fix folks up.

Now we’re going to help make it a little (or a lot!) easier. Starting today, Windows Live Messenger beta users can use the Windows Live Safety scanner (beta) to help find and remove malware, diagnose performance issues, and do remote PC tune-ups for a buddy’s machine.

(Keep in mind that both you and your buddy must be using the Windows Live Messenger 8.0 beta for this to work. You can sign up for the Messenger beta at http://ideas.live.com)

Here’s how it works:

Your sister has heard about viruses on the news over the past few days, and she’s worried she has one. She pings you in Messenger, asking if she can call you for help. You tell her you’ve got an even better idea: You send her an invitation to run the Windows Live Safety scanner with your help. She accepts the invitation, the Safety scanner starts up inside Messenger, and you help her run a scan.

The scanner in Messenger works just like the scanner on the Windows Live Safety Center website. As it checks your sister’s PC, it’s looking for common PC health issues such as viruses, disk fragmentation, wasted disk space, and open network ports.

Once the scan is done, both you and your sister can see the results. You IM her to say her PC is free of viruses, but there are some things you can do to make it work better. She’s prompted in Messenger to let you make these fixes, and then her PC is fixed.

At all times during the process, your sister gets to make the key decisions about letting you fix her PC.

Once everything is fixed, both you and your sister can view a summary of what the Safety scanner has done.

We hope this makes your lives easier, and maybe even help save on phone bills. ;~)

PS: Windows Live Safety Center is only available in the US right now, so this application is as well. We will be bringing Safety Center to other markets in the future (and you can presume this app as well) -- stay tuned :-)

PPS: This feature is only available within Windows Live Messenger.

Go, go, Gadget, go! Safety Center Gadget now on live.com

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 18:33:18 GMT

Everyone at CES last week was talking about convergence (don’t they always )? Well, we’ve got a little homegrown convergence here in Live.com land. If you’ve used the Safety Center scanner, and you’re a Live.com user, you can see a summary of your last scan, including date, type of scan run, and results. The gadget will also provide recommended actions based on all this info.

Check it out by selecting Safety Center in the Gadgets folder on the sidebar – and let us know what you think!

By request...IE7 Support and Customized Virus Scan!

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 22:51:17 GMT

Thank you all for taking time to check out our scanner! Since we launched on November 1, we have gotten an enormous amount of feedback requesting that we support the new version of Internet Explorer, IE7 Beta 1 on Windows XP – so, here you go! :) We really have been listening to each of you - and it is your input that is helping us to make this a great product - so keep it coming!

Alongside this, we’ve also heard from you that you’d like to be able to customize your virus scan – so guess what? Yep, you can now select just where you want to scan for viruses on your system! It’s easy – check it out!

Click on the Full Service Scan button on the homepage…

From there, the scanner will install and load up – now click on Customize to get into some more details…

Alright – almost there! Now, click on the radio button for Customized scan listed under the Protection heading and click Next…

Now choose where you want to scan and click Next to start the scan!

We'd also like to let you know that we've been working on fixing some of the issues that you've previously seen in the beta - and many of them are now fixed and ready to go! So, check out the scanner again and let us know what you think!

Running low on hard disk space?

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 23:04:47 GMT

Have you experienced issues when trying to install the scanner? If you’ve exhausted all the troubleshooting steps we have on the website and come up empty, it may be because you are running low on free hard disk space. So just what can you do about that?

There are two main solutions that could help you free up some disk space so that you can run the scanner.

The first option is to run the Disk Cleanup utility that comes with Windows and see if you can free up any space. To start Disk Cleanup, click Start and then click Run…. In the text box, type cleanmgr.exe which will launch the utility. If you’re asked to select a drive, choose the drive that Windows is installed on, which is usually the C:\ drive). After the utility has checked your computer, you’ll see a list of files that you can delete on your system. You can either go with the default selections or customize it to only delete what you want to delete. When you’re finished, click OK and the files will be deleted.

The second option is to remove programs from your computer that you no longer use. To do this, click Start, click Control Panel, and then double click Add or Remove Programs. Scroll through the list of programs and locate the ones that you’ve previously installed but no longer use or need. Click on each item that you wish to remove and then click Remove to uninstall it.

These two solutions should help you free up some space and get you running the scanner!

Thoughts on the Network Safety scan?

Tue, 29 Nov 2005 20:08:46 GMT

Hi everyone - our team is working hard on new features for the scanner as well as making improvements on current features. We would love to hear your input on the open ports scan under the Network Safety portion of the scanner. What is the biggest benefit of this feature? What improvements or additions would you like to see? Let us know!!

Welcome to the Windows Live Safety Center WebLog!!

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 19:23:22 GMT

Hey everyone – this is Lara, member of the Program Management team for Windows Live Safety Center. The team is really excited about our beta release this week! I’m hoping we have a lot of home users visit our site and use our scanner, and of course give us feedback on what they like in the scanner or what else they would like to see added. I know I will be asking my friends and family to scan their PCs. We’ll be adding more to our site and scanner over the next few months, so stay tuned…

Let us know what you think…

Tue, 01 Nov 2005 00:28:47 GMT

Here’s where you can tell us what you think about the Windows Live Safety Center scanner and website. We really appreciate knowing what you like and don’t like, and what you’d like to see added in the future. We’ll be looking at your feedback and feature requests and you may see some of it incorporated in a future update.