Some feedback and a few questions re RougeKiller

[chjohans]

I found RougeKiller when looking into the other software you are offering, after switching from SUMo (now defunct) to UCheck.

I've tried quite a few anti-malware and anti-virus solutions, but always ended up just using Windows Defender. There were always some issues, usually, they were too intrusive, eg would just go ahead and delete or quarantine any "positives" (often "false positives"), without first giving me a choice of what to do. I guess it's done to "simplify" things for the average user, but I want full control of what is changed on my PC. I did use Malwarebytes Pro for a year or so but opted not to renew. It caused a few issues, used too many resources, and they simply charged in my opinion way too much per year.

Now to the point, I see that RougeKiller does not have any of these issues. I really like that it gives me a list of "positives", and the option of what to do with every one of them. And I like the simplicity of "whitelisting" something from the scan results. I also liked that it would find firewall exceptions for unknown applications, and again that it would easily let me add exceptions. The ransomware protection and data leak protection looks great too. And your MalPE ;module seems promising, although it found a few false positives that I again could make exceptions for.

So far I've just used the free version, but as my confidence grew in this product I just opted for the 30-day trial for the Pro version. A couple of issues I'm seeing:

1) I was gonna "complain" about the "Upsell" of Ucheck, eg that it suggests Ucheck (which I have already installed and licensed) to find and update X outdated programs, but I just found the setting to toggle that off. I guess that setting is only available in the Premium version. So I retract that "complaint"

2) I am unable to schedule more than one scan, but the UI indicates that it should be possible to schedule more than one scan. The "plus" symbol will not let me add a second (or third) scheduled scan. Please see the attached screenshot.

3) I miss an option to schedule a "custom scan". Ideally, I would like to schedule a "daily Quick Scan", a "weekly Standard Scan" and a monthly "Custom Scan (all my drives)". Please consider this as an enhancement.

4) This is more a question. I would like to understand better what "Quick Scan" and "Standard Scan" does, and I find no real explanation in the Docs section on your website. I assume "Quick Scan" might only scan for instance any programs with links in your "start menu", any startup items, and possibly a few more locations? And maybe "Standard Scan" scans the whole C: drive, or possibly just \WIndows and \Program Files?  Is this documented somewhere?

5) I guess this is a question too. Your scheduled scan(s) (I can only add one as explained above), will RougeKiller wake up my computer from sleep mode to run the scan? If not, could this please be implemented?

[Tigzy]

Hello,
Thanks for your message.

The scheduled scan can for now only have one item. This is an intermediate ability, it should come soon.
Same goes for types of scans, we planned to add different types. The UI says otherwise because we have anticipated this new addition.

Quick scan only scans most critical locations, where malware are often seen. Standard will scan all system locations (not whole C: though). Custom scan allows to scan what standard does + external drives / full drives for example.
It's not documented because most users don't want to know. If you want more granularity, I'd recommend looking at Adlice Diag.

We didn't plan to wake computer up from sleep mode for scanning, we found this too intrusive. Instead, the scanner tries to catch up if the last miss if not too far in the past.
We may consider adding a setting later, but TBH it's very low priority compared to the above.

[chjohans]

Thanks for your response. Maybe you could consider making an *option* (now that is not intrusive is it?) to let RK wake up the computer to run a scan? I take my scans seriously, and I would like to make sure they run. And I definitely would hate for them to run when I wake up my computer to use it, now *that* is intrusive!

Alternatively, instead of using your own scheduler, use Windows Task Scheduler and "wakeup to run" is already supported. Why try and reinvent the wheel?

Regarding what the different scans do, you are just repeating what's already in your docs, and it doesn't tell me much. I would like to know exactly what is being scanned, please. There is no standard definition for "most critical locations, where malware are often seen" and "all system locations". Could you please be more specific?

Scheduled scans are to me quite basic functionality that an anti-malware product that costs money needs to have. I honestly do expect to be able to schedule scans of whatever I want to be run whenever I want them to run.

Now this is why I'm stuck with MS Defender, there is always "something" with the alternatives. Maybe some day.