ClamWin is free

Free software

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...

, open source antivirus software

Antivirus software

Antivirus or anti-virus software is used to prevent, detect, and remove malware, including but not limited to computer viruses, computer worm, trojan horses, spyware and adware...

 for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. It provides a graphical user interface to the ClamAV (Clam AntiVirus) engine.

Features

• Scanning scheduler (only effective with user logged in).
• Automatic virus database updates on a regular basis.
• Standalone virus-scanner.
• Context menu integration for Windows Explorer
  Windows Explorer
  This article is about the Windows file system browser. For the similarly named web browser, see Internet ExplorerWindows Explorer is a file manager application that is included with releases of the Microsoft Windows operating system from Windows 95 onwards. It provides a graphical user interface...
  
  .
• Add-in for Microsoft Outlook.
• A portable version that can be used from a USB flash drive
  USB flash drive
  A flash drive is a data storage device that consists of flash memory with an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g...
  
  .

Firefox extensions exist that allow the users to process downloaded files with ClamWin.

Real-time scanning

ClamWin does not yet automatically scan files

Real-time protection

Real-time protection, on-access scanning, background guard, resident shield, autoprotect, and other synonyms refer to the automatic protection provided by most antivirus, antispyware, and other antimalware programs, which is arguably their most important feature...

 as they are read and written. This feature is planned for inclusion in the next major version update and has been claimed to be in development since at least 10 December 2005.

The non-affiliated project Clam Sentinel is an add-on that provides a real-time scanning capability to ClamWin.

Effectiveness

ClamWin suffers from poor detection rates and its scans are slow and less effective than some other antivirus programs. For example, ClamWin failed to detect almost half of the trojan horses, password stealers, and other malware in AV-Test.org's "zoo" of malware samples.

In the 1 - 21 June 2008 test performed by Virus.gr, ClamWin version 0.93 detected 54.68% of all threats and ranked 37th out of 49 products tested; the best scored over 99%.

In the 10 August-05 September 2009 test performed by Virus.gr, ClamWin version 0.95.2 detected 52.48% of all threats and ranked 43 out of 55 products tested; the best scored 98.89%.

External links

• Official Website
• SourceForge.net project page
• ClamWin Portable - run ClamWin from a removable drive