IObit Malware Fighter User Manual

IObit Malware Fighter

As a potent and all-inclusive anti-malware and anti-virus tool, IObit Malware Fighter can detect and crush the latest spyware, adware, ransomware, Trojans, keyloggers, bots, worms, hijackers, viruses, etc. that other antivirus software may overlook.

Keep reading the following guide to know more about how IObit Malware Fighter provides such real-time & all-around protections for your browsers, privacy, and the whole system.

System Requirements

Operating Systems Supported

Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista

Hardware Requirements

1 GHz processor or faster processor

2 GB of RAM

1,000 MB of free hard disk space

1024*768 screen resolution and above

Download and Installation

1) Click here to download the latest IObit Malware Fighter.

2) Double-click the downloaded IObit-Malware-Fighter-Setup.exe to start the installation.

Uninstall IObit Malware Fighter

Please follow the uninstall instructions to uninstall IObit Malware Fighter.

Updates

Pro version users can always enjoy the latest program and database automatically with Automatically update the program and database (Recommended) option ticked by default in Settings.

Free version users can manually update IObit Malware Fighter and its database with the options below:

1) Click at the top right of the main screen and select Check for Updates to update your program and/or database to the latest when updates are available.

2) Clicking in the main screen can also help you update the outdated database.

3) Right click the icon in the system tray, and select Check for Updates.

Activation

Note: A valid license code is required to activate the Pro version. If you forgot your license code, retrieve it here. You can also click here to purchase a new one.

Click the Enter Code link at the bottom right corner of IObit Malware Fighter main screen, enter your license code, and click the Register Now button to activate the Pro version. Visit here for step-by-step activation instruction.

Manage License - After upgrading to the Pro version, you can click the Manage License link at the bottom right of the screen to check the detailed license information, Refresh your license, or Export License.

Main Screen

This is the first screen you may see after IObit Malware Fighter is installed and launched.

PC Status

When you open IObit Malware Fighter, you will see one of the following four kinds of PC status according to the current status of your PC.

1. YOUR PC IS PROTECTED - It indicates that your computer is fully protected by IObit Malware Fighter.

2. YOUR PC IS NOT FULLY PROTECTED - It indicates that there are some functions under Browser Protect or Security Guard not enabled.

Please just click the Protect Now button. Then the program will turn on all functions under Browser Protect and Security Guard to fully protect your PC.

3. YOUR PC MAY BE IN DANGER - It indicates that your IObit Malware Fighter is not fully functional. It happens when two or three of the following situations exist:

1) The database is outdated.

2) Functions under Browser Protect or Security Guard are not fully turned on.

3) You haven't scanned with IObit Malware Fighter for 3+ days.

4. YOUR PC NEEDS A SMART SCAN - It indicates that the database is up to date and Browser Protect and Security Guard work well, but you haven't scanned with IObit Malware Fighter for 3+ days or you never perform a scan after the installation.

Scan and Protect Engines

You can also check the 3 engines' status and details in the main screen by hovering the mouse over the icon of the engine.

IObit Anti-malware Engine, enabled by default, is the core feature of IObit Malware Fighter. For your PC security, it cannot be disabled.

Anti-ransomware Engine is off by default. You can enable it manually after activating IObit Malware Fighter Pro to protect your PC from ransomware attacks.

Bitdefender Engine is off by default. You can enable it manually after activating IObit Malware Fighter Pro.

Clicking the arrow icon at the right bottom corner can help you fold the three engines as below:

Notification Center

Click at the top right corner to check all missed notifications, then take action accordingly.

Scan

The 3 scan methods (Smart Scan, Full Scan, and Custom Scan) are prominently displayed as below. Besides, it also supports Right-click Scan, which will be introduced at the end of this part.

Smart Scan - Quickly scan the most critical sections of your computer.

Full Scan - Comprehensively scan all hard drives for the deepest infections, and remove or quarantine them. Generally, Full Scan takes much longer time than Smart Scan, Custom Scan, and Right-click Scan.

Custom Scan - Only scan the items you selected. Besides listing all disks on your computer, it also displays System Critical Areas and Suspicious Processes as these areas are most likely to be infected. To scan these locations, just tick the checkboxes before them and click Scan. You can also navigate to a specific folder on any disk to perform a custom scan instead of selecting the whole disk to save time. Or just drag and drop a file/folder to scan it directly.

Right-click Scan - Just right-click on the item you want to scan and then select Scan with IObit Malware Fighter from the context menu.

Auto Scan - Clicking the Auto Scan button at the bottom right of the Scan window will go to the settings of Auto Scan so that you can configure the most appropriate scan method for your PC.

Scan Process

When you start a scan, you will the see scan processes like below.

You can tick Automatically remove in the scan screen to remove the threats found automatically after the scan. Clicking the dropdown arrow icon will offer 5 options as the picture below: Automatically remove, Auto remove & Shut down PC, Auto remove & Restart PC, Auto remove & Hibernate PC, and Auto remove & Sleep PC.

Scan Results

1) No Threats Detected.

If no threat is detected, it will show "No threats Detected." and you may get action recommendations according to your PC status, such as run a Full Scan.

2) XX Threats Detected. Your PC is at risk! If threats are detected, it will display the detailed information as below.

By clicking the dropdown button of each threat, you will see the following four operation options.

Remove - Click it to remove the corresponding threat.

Ignore - Click it to ignore the corresponding threat just for this time.

Add to White List - Add this threat to White List and it won't be scanned anymore unless it is removed from White List.

Open file location - Click it to open the file location of the detected item.

View Report - Click it to see the details about the scan.

Report False Positive - In case of a false positive, please click the Report False Positive link at the bottom left corner to open the feedback window and submit false positive to IObit. IObit Support Team will analyze the false positive and perform actions accordingly.

NOTE: Please refer to the Report False Positive section of this manual to get detailed information about how to report a false positive.

Click the Remove button at the right corner to remove all selected threats found on your PC or click Cancel to not deal with the threats found. However, it is highly recommended that you remove all the threats found to ensure your PC security.

Browser Protect

Click Browser Protect through sidebar to open the window below. These features can help protect your browsers in real time and ensure you a safe and smooth surfing environment. Browser Protect provides 6 features as below to protect your browsers against threats. Moving your mouse to each feature will give you a short introduction of the corresponding feature and a Settings icon at the top right corner..

Homepage Advisor - It monitors any change to your browser homepage and search engine, and notifies you to undo the change to prevent malicious modification. Currently, it supports Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. You can click the Settings icon to check the protection status and history, or adjust the settings to serve you better:

Anti-Tracking - It protects you from being tracked by monitoring and cleaning harmful tracking data automatically once your browser is closed. Currently, it supports Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge. This feature is only available for IObit Malware Fighter Pro version users.

Download Protection - It scans the downloaded files to keep your PC away from malicious files.

DNS Protect - It protects your system DNS settings from being modified by malware. You can click the Settings icon to select the DNS settings you want to protect.

Surfing Protection - It protects you against various online threats to secure your surfing experience, and keeps you from annoying ads on webpages. Besides, its Email Protection can protect your web emails against spam, phishing scam, and other email-borne threats. Currently, Surfing Protection supports Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, and Firefox; Ads Removal supports Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Firefox; Email Protection supports Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail. To enable this feature, IObit Surfing Protection Extension needs to be added to your browser.

Anonymous Online - It recommends a third-party VPN program to hide your location, IP, and identity to stay anonymous online for higher privacy protection.

Security Guard

Click Security Guard on the sidebar to open Security Guard window. It contains two parts: Protection and Protect History. Under Protection, you can see both the status of 3 protection engines as mentioned before and the status of the helpful 9 guards.

NOTE: Only IObit Malware Fighter Pro edition can get all guards unlocked.

By hovering your mouse over each guard, you will see the detailed explanation for each guard as follows:

Network Guard - Blocks web pages containing threats.

File Guard - Scans for threats when running unknown files. This feature is only available for IObit Malware Fighter Pro version users.

Startup Guard - Protects against suspicious malware at Windows Startup.

Process Guard - Detects malicious processes running in RAM.

MBR Guard - Protects against the malicious attacks targeting MBR like GoldenEye/Petya attacks. This feature is only available for IObit Malware Fighter Pro version users.

Camera Guard - Protects your camera from unauthorized accesses and unknown programs. This feature is only available for IObit Malware Fighter Pro version users.

USB Disk Guard - Prevents USB virus from harming your PC. This feature is only available for IObit Malware Fighter Pro version users.

Behavior Guard - Prevents suspicious threats in advance based on behavior analysis for higher PC security.

Browser Password Guard - Protects your stored browser passwords from being stolen. (Support Chrome, Edge(Chromium), Firefox, Opera, and Brave)

Here you can also see details of your protect history by clicking Protect History.

Protect report - It records the total number of the analyzed files and detected threats.

Recently detected items - It shows the details of detected threats by Security Guard.

Tools

You will see Safe Box,and Free & Fast VPN under Tools.

Safe Box - It protects your privacy and sensitive data from unauthorized accesses. It is only available for Pro version users. After activating the Pro version, you can click Open button to open safe box to add the files/folders for protection.

To get higher protection, you can set the password protection by ticking Enable password protection in its Settings. Once you set a password, no one can access your protected files/folders without your password.

Free & Fast VPN - It recommends a third-party VPN program which can offer you a secure access to Internet with military-grade protection.

Action Center

To get better security protection and performance boost, Action Center recommends you other well-known IObit software and third-party programs. You can run the programs directly in Action Center once you installed them. Or click Install Now to install the program you might be interested in.

Note: Click Hide at the upper right corner of the window if you do not want the recommended programs, and click Show in the middle of the window to display them again.

Settings

Click at the top right of the main screen and click Settings to configure IObit Malware Fighter according to your own needs and habits at first.

Note: Do not forget to click the OK button to save your changes.

You can customize skin and font size as per your needs. Please refer to the picture below:

System Tray Icon

After IObit Malware Fighter is launched, you can quickly view the status of your PC or the protection status of IObit Malware Fighter from the prompt of the system tray icon. Just perform the operations accordingly to protect your PC. Generally, you may see the following four kinds of system tray prompts.

Right click the icon of IObit Malware Fighter in the system tray and you can see the functions in the context menu as the picture below:

Open IObit Malware Fighter - Open the main window of IObit Malware Fighter.

Smart Scan - Run a smart scan of your PC.

Tools - Open the Tools window directly.

Browser Protect - Open the Browser Protect window directly.

Turn off Real-time Protection - You can choose to turn off real-time protection Until Restart IMF or Permanently. It is strongly recommended that you keep real-time protection running in the background to protect your PC from various malware attacks.

Check for Updates - Check whether you have the latest program and database.

Exit - Close IObit Malware Fighter completely.

Note: Please visit IObit Malware Fighter FAQs page for the instruction to get rid of the yellow triangle with exclamation mark.

Report False Positive

A false positive occurs when an anti-malware program detects a file as malicious, but in fact, it is legitimate. False Positives are unavoidable for any security software including IObit Malware Fighter and we are always trying our best to prevent these false positives from happening. In the event of a false positive, please follow the steps below before you report a false positive:

1. Make sure that you have updated IObit Malware Fighter to the latest database version.

2. Click here to upload the suspicious file to VirusTotal for analyzing to verify whether it's reported as malicious file by other security software.

3. There are two ways to report a false positive:

1) Click Report False Positive in the scan results screen to open the feedback window to contact us. Please click attachment and select the falsely reported files. Then click Send button to report us the false positive. If possible, please also provide us with the analysis report link from VirusTotal.

2) Click false positive link to be connected to IObit Forums, post the report there so that IObit Support will get the information to investigate and resolve the issue quickly.

Technical Support

Every feedback from you is valued. To ensure you can reach us in time, we provide several feedback channels:

FAQ

It's recommended to read our FAQs before looking in the other sections for help. Because sometimes, the questions have already been answered before you ask them here!

IObit Forum

Propose your questions and concerns to IObit Forum, and discuss them with many other experienced and enthusiastic users and our technical staff.

Built-in Feedback

Click at the top right corner and then click Send Feedback to open the Send Feedback window. Make sure your E-mail address is correct, choose proper Request type, and specify it in Description. Besides, clicking the icon to send us screenshots of error messages, if any, will be much more helpful.

NOTE: Please make sure that your email address is valid, or you may not receive our reply.

Online Feedback

If you can't find the answers on our FAQs page or IObit Forums, please don't hesitate to contact us for email support. We will reply to you ASAP.

Thank You

Thanks to all IObit Malware Fighter users and beta testers who motivate us to make this product and make it better and better.

Thanks to IObit Forum Administrators, Super Moderators, and Moderators who are selflessly dedicated to help every forum visitor.

Thanks to the following volunteer translators who greatly help improve IObit Malware Fighter user experience and introduce it to more users worldwide:

lculator zaloom, Lyuben Panchev, Jan Szotkowski, Lars Wegge Andersen, Kris Van Damme, JG Niesten, Chris Verberne, Roland LALIS, Alexander Schmidt, Stathis Doukas, Eli Ben David, Brechler Zsolt, Claudio Birello, Nagai Tsuneo, JaeHyung Lee, Thor Stange, gra mi, Igor Rückert, Fernando Santos , Cosmin Barna, Виктор Алиев, Ilija Komljenović, dedko58, Marjan Mirai, Roberto Paiva, Annelie Pernheden, Dan Zhang, Alan, Kamil Bodur, Rid Destro.