ADinf32 is an anti-virus and data integrity toolkit which takes 'snapshots' of your hard drive(s) and looks for changes since the previous 'snapshot'.
Used in conjunction with an anti-virus cleaner, ADinf32 can often detect new viruses, etc where other anti-virus programs can't. This is because it looks for minute changes in files and reports which files have been changed. It can also rebuild some damaged EXE files (usually caused by viruses but it could be just a disk problem).
The author's description is worth repeating: "It is a powerful disk inspector and integrity checker which scans each disk, reading its sectors one by one without assistance of the operating system. Its mission is wider than mere anti-virus protection - besides detecting viruses, ADinf scrupulously evaluates a system for full data integrity and security, and for other data modifications. To find a lost file, to analyze the results of a system failure, to make sure databases and documents are safe, to figure out why all free space on your hard disk is gone, to detect a computer virus all this can be done by ADinf. ADinf can parse the internal structure of DOC and XLS files, and can automatically detect macro-viruses."
ADinf (not just the Win9x version) has been in use within Russia for about 10 years and is used by banks and security agencies to help protect their data.
We were most impressed with this program and consider it a worthy addition to any computer to work beside (but not replace) your regular anti-virus program.
The author's site indicates that the program is not really free but apparently this is not the case – it is free for non-commercial use only and remains an on-going 'evaluation' program (with some small limitations) for as long as you want to use it.
There are Win 3.1 and DOS versions available too.
| Update: |
February 11, 2000 |
ADinf32 has been updated to version 2.02.
This version has a number of improvements, including: completely reworked interface in the Scan Results window; the program requires less memory; and algorithms for low-level reading disk sectors under Windows NT are changed to provide compatibility with some non-standard hardware. There have also been some bug fixes.
Above: main window after a successful scan.
Above: scan results window showing files saved since the last scan.
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Desktop Utils