If you've got a PC infected with malware, spyware, or rogue/fake antivirus applications, the best tool for removing them is the free SUPERAntiSpyware Portable edition. Here at How-To Geek HQ, this is the tool we use to clean nasty infections like Antivirus Live.

You might wonder why a portable version is so important... the problem is that the worst malware infections block you from installing malware removal software, and even if you manage to get it installed, most of the time when you try and launch it, you'll get an error like this one:

Note: that's a real screenshot from a real virus that we cleaned with SUPERAntiSpyware Portable.

SUPERAntiSpyware Portable solves this problem by not only giving you a completely portable version of the application, which consists of a single file you can copy to your USB drive without requiring installation, but it also automatically gives you a random filename so the malware can't detect it as easily.

You should note that when you download the application, it includes all the latest updates as of when you downloaded it.

Sidebar Geek Note

If you've had a lot of experience cleaning viruses, you'll probably note that you could always run SUPERAntiSpyware as a portable application by installing it to a thumb drive, but the updates didn't automatically come along with it.

Some of us were also using a hack method involving a batch file and setting environment variables to make sure the updates were installed on the thumb drive, but thankfully the new version fixes the problem by automatically including them. The really ironic thing is that I'd written an article scheduled for next week on how to do just that. Oh well, this is much better anyway.

Using SUPERAntiSpyware Portable

Once you've launched the application on an infected machine, you should see a welcome screen, and you can just click the button to start it up.

Pick your language...

And just like that, you're in the main interface. If you haven't used the regular SUPERAntiSpyware before, you should click the Scan your Computer button---though if you've had it sitting on your system for a while you might want to use the update check first.

Select the locations to scan, and choose to Perform Complete Scan (there's no point in a quick scan on an infected machine).

The application will scan through the system and find anything bad on the system, and then let you remove it all easily. Note: this is a screenshot from an infected machine that we successfully cleaned using SUPERAntiSpyware.

So there you have it, a full endorsement from How-To Geek for SUPERAntiSpyware. I have personally used it to clean at least a dozen machines infected with really terrible rogue/fake antimalware applications.

Note: SUPERAntiSpyware is not an anti-virus software, and is meant for removing spyware and rogue applications that hold your PC for ransom. You still need Microsoft Security Essentials for your real-time protection.

Download SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scanner from superantispyware.com