A closer look at Panda ActiveScan 2.0 – Free Antivirus

Panda’s ActiveScan is an online security solution that scans your computer for viruses, worms and Trojans, spyware and other Internet threats. It detects and eliminates malicious programs in your computer memory and in your e-mail and compressed files.

It works online, directly from your Internet browser. No need to install any programs, just automatically download an ActiveX. It works only with Windows operating systems.

To start the scanning, go to this page and click on the “Scan your PC now” button. You will be redirected and presented with this “welcome screen”:

As you can see, you can choose among 9 languages in which to view the solution. Before starting the scan, you have to register a free account:

The free account will get you only antivirus protection – for desinfecting your computer form spyware or for permanent protection you will have to pay. After registering, you can start scanning. You can choose between a quick or a full scan, with additional scan options just a click on a link away (Other scans):

To do any of this, you have to download the Active Scan 2.0 plug-in, save it and run it:

After downloading Active Scan 2.0 components and waiting for them to update, you are finally ready to start the scanning process:

The Full Scan I chose took a seriously long time – more than an hour and a half. Here are the results:

You can disinfect the found files, send suspicious files to PandaLabs, and access an online data database of vulnerabilities and threats:

Panda ActiveScan 2.0 – Free Antivirus is very simple to use. Unfortunately, it doesn’t offer the complete possibilities in the free version, and it lacks the speed to be used as a quick fix.