There are times when you think you may have a virus, or you have a friend that just didn’t upgrade his antivirus from Norton 1998 edition. Microsoft has you covered. Microsoft Safety Scanner is a standalone, on demand security tool that scans for virues, spyware and malware. This is NOT real time virus protection. In fact, everytime you download the program, it expires after 10 days. After that, you will need to re-download it to get the up to date definitions.
If you are want to use this in addition to your current anti-virus, that’s great. If you aren’t running any anti-virus, now would be a good time to head over and download Microsoft Security Essentials.