Microsfot Malicious Software Removal. Infected files, not malicious?

[sarym13]

So its been a while since I ran any scans, figured I'd do it now. Nothing major was caught during them but when I was running Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool I noticed during the scans it would catch infected files, but at the end it says "No malicious software was detected".

Anyone here familiar with this program? Does it only consider serious threats worth mentioning at the end? First time running this, and it saying Files infected during the scan I'd imagine that is something worth mentioning at the end of the scan.

Here's some pics for reference.


Infected File message during scan


Completed scan with no malcious software.



Just concerned if I am actually infected and the malicious files are just sending the scan to finish as nothing detected despite there being findings. Or if Microsoft Software Removal Tool just only mentions serious malicious software detected at the end.

[smackyslap]

I think you are better off using other scanners like hitmanpro or malewayrebites and if they do find something that you think is a legit file you can upload it to https://www.virustotal.com/en/ and that will show you a list of 57ish avs and if they think it's safe or not.

[chazus]

1) You didn't give any useful info about the details. It found -something- but you didn't tell us what. Hard to say what it does without that.
2) A proper scan in my book is JRT, CCleaner, Malware Bytes, Hitman Pro, reboot, CCleaner again. 99% of crap will be removed with that.

[Docturphil]

Just concerned if I am actually infected and the malicious files are just sending the scan to finish as nothing detected despite there being findings. Or if Microsoft Software Removal Tool just only mentions serious malicious software detected at the end.

Is it possible your malware detection/removal tool fails to find malware on your computer? Absolutely. That is absolutely possible. A smart malware developer will try and create something which is undetectable by most anti-malware software. Sometimes they're successful, at least until somebody finds out about the malware they've created and updates their anti-malware software to combat it.

New malware is always being released into the wild. Anti-malware always needs to be updated and will never catch 100% of the silly things you might click on.

Your best bet if you don't want malware is to not click on anything suspicious or run any suspicious programs. If you're not sure what it is, don't click on it. There are about a million dead giveaways that can help you identify malware yourself. You just have to know what you're doing.

[sarym13]

1) You didn't give any useful info about the details. It found -something- but you didn't tell us what. Hard to say what it does without that.
2) A proper scan in my book is JRT, CCleaner, Malware Bytes, Hitman Pro, reboot, CCleaner again. 99% of crap will be removed with that.

1. That's the thing, it wen't straight to a scanned finish with no malicious stuff detected despite there being found infections during the scanning. Its as if it got forced to a no results found instead of showing what infections were discovered. Mainly curious if anyone else had this issue, but i'll look into the other scanners you mentioned

[Deleted]

I suppose, the infected counter includes all files that match the signature list including false positives.
Later in the process the potentially dangerous files are checked for known false positives and those get removed from the results.

In your case 2 files triggered the signature based detection but are later recognized (possibly via online checks) as false positives, resulting in 0 malicious files found.

[styxore]

You are clean as far as MSRT is concerned. Anyways, there is no need to run MSRT manually, if your system is updated regularly.
If not, you got bigger concerns than running some random snakeoil.
And if you are truly concerned about the safety of your system you shouldn't be running a dated OS like Windows 7 in the first place.

[Maxxyz]

Thanks for the info, it will help me grow.