i have had 'the cleaner' from moosoft recomended to me by some other people from a gaming site.
is this progam safe to use?
anyone heard of it?
its supposed to be a good virus software, but i want to know exactly what it does before downloading it.
here is the address i was given.
http://www.moosoft.com/thecleaner/download.php

I don't have any personal experience with it, but here are some reviews:

1
2
3
4

They disagree about how effective it is, but all indicate that it is easy to use and none mention any danger in using it.

hey, thanks for the links.
ill look into it and see what matt thinks about yet another anti virus/scum/popup add stopper program on the computer.

Lynda:

Based on what I see of their $29.95 program, you might get the same program by installing 2 (or 3) free ones: Spybot S & D (and/or AdAware) and Spyware Blaster.

Couldn't hurt to take the 30-day trial for a test drive to see how it stacks up against Spybot/AdAware and Spyware Blaster.

In fact...I think I'll do just that!

Well, one thing that I didn't care for: the documentation reports that there's a possible conflict (bug) if you are running a virus scanner. It even advises you to disable it when you use The Cleaner.

Since I'm on DSL, there's no way that I feel safe disabling my anti-virus program; not even for a couple minutes.

It's running right now, and I don't see any difference, except looks, from the free version of AdAware. Spyware S & D offers you even more bang, for no money at all.

There's nothing, intrinsically, wrong with it, but I wouldn't recommend something that costs $30 and does less than what 1 FREE program does (Spybot S & D).

This, however, is just MY opinion.

thanks for the info sonnet.
and yes, i dont really see the point when spybot and adaware are both free.

Okay, I just finished running all three programs for a comparison. Here's what I found:

• The Cleaner scan took 30 minutes to search approximately 200,000 files; it only searched for Trojans. It offers to monitor for Trojans, but that's what your anti-virus program does anyway.
• The Spybot S & D scan took 17 minutes to search approximately 200,000 files; it searched for Trojans, Worms, Dialers, Cookies, Tracks, Spybots, Malware, Keyloggers, Hijackers, Security Exploits, ActiveX...plus it has lots more features. If I'd had any "nastys", it would have cleaned them out. It also lets you clean out your usage tracks for quite a number of your installed programs, histories, etc.
• The AdAware scan took 20 minutes to search approximately 200,000 files; it searched for Spyware, Adware and would have cleaned them out, also. It does a deeper search than Spybot, but it doesn't search for quite as many types of "nastys." Which is why I use them both.

Bottom line: The Cleaner really isn't worth spending your money on, in my opinion.