Goodbye A-Squared. Welcome Emsisoft Anti-Malware and Free Emergency Kit

Early this month Emisoft Software announced that they would phase out the popular antivirus product A-Squared and replace it with two new products - Emsisoft Anti-Malware and Emsisoft Emergency Kit.

Emsisoft Anti-Malware is basically A-Squared in a new package and available in free and paid versions. Emsisoft Emergency Kit, on the other hand, is a collection of free and portable programs from Emisoft that can be used to scan and clean infected computers for malware.

The free Emergency Kit consists of 4 applications:

1. Emsisoft Emergency Kit Scanner based on Emsisoft Anti-Malware malware detection and removal technology. It offers all functionality that the previous USB edition of a-squared Free provided and adds a lot of improvements done in Emsisoft Anti-Malware 5.0.
2. Emsisoft Commandline Scanner contains the same functionality as the Emergency Kit Scanner but without a graphical user interface. It allows complete access to all on-demand scan functionalities as well as quarantine and removal features from the command line. The command line tool is made for professional users and can be used perfectly for batch jobs.
3. Emsisoft HiJackFree is a powerful system and malware removal utility that provides access to almost all currently known autorun locations and provides detailed information about currently running processes. With HiJackFree you can manage all active processes, services, drivers, autoruns, open ports, hosts file entries and many more.
4. Emsisoft BlitzBlank is a file and registry entry removal utility that can be used to clean even the most stubborn malware infections. BlitzBlank deletes files, Registry entries, drivers and other locked files at boot time before Windows and all other programs are loaded.

Together, Emsisoft Emergency Kit hopes to provide robust protection to a computer from viruses, trojans, spyware, adware, worms, dialers, keyloggers and other malign programs. The portable nature of the applications allows you to carry them about on a USB Flash drive which should come handy when carrying out virus cleaning operation on your friends' PCs.