Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
For anyone who has never heard of a FixMeStick, it’s essentially a bootable USB device for finding and removing malware on Windows computers. That being said, it will also boot and run on other computers (eg. a Linux laptop). However, the scans are intended for windows malware. I was sent a review copy, and what follows are my thoughts on the device.
Ease of Use
The device can be booted normally via the BIOS, or booted via an executable available in Windows. In my testing, I only booted it via BIOS, and I also ran into issues running the device in a virtual machine.
Once booted to the device, it guides you into connecting to a network, and then doing the updates, registration, and scan. The steps were easily enough completed, but if your device suffers from compatibility issues with Linux and network-manager, you may not be able to connect, which seems to prevent the stick from working.
Efficiency
Once the network connection is active, the process seems to be largely automated. The exception is registration of the device, which should need to be done only once.
Alternatives
If you don’t mind putting in a little more work, you can set up a linux-based live USB with linux-based AV software. It gives you more control, but is more work to keep updated and running. That being said, you can include other tools for managing and fixing other issues, giving you more of a one-stop tool for your problems.
Effectiveness
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to test this very well. I would have run the device on a virtual machine that I had previously infested with malware. However, due to my inability to run the stick in a virtualized environment, I could not do this. As the alternative was to infest an actual Windows computer, which was not an option, I simply ran it on a working PC. The result was no malware found (as I expected). Out of curiosity, I also ran it on a Linux laptop. It successfully scanned the EXT4 partition. I would assume it was still only checking for Windows malware, but it offers you the ability to make sure you’re not sharing infected files.
You can also start a custom scan, where you can choose disks and folders to scan. This means you can take a system drive out of another computer and check it for malware.
As for performance - I didn’t notice the FixMeStick completing the scans much faster than the live USB. But that could be due to USB 2.0 on my test device, or other hardware.
Downsides
The stick can only be registered on 3 computers at a time, and the updates only run for a year. Amazon (Germany) has the stick available for 60€. So depending on how often you expect to use it, it may be too steep of a price for you. If the limitation of 3 computers makes you worry about false positives (i.e. the same PC being registered as a second one after a motherboard upgrade/replacement), I was assured by their support team that it would be possible to unregister a computer.
Variants
According to an Amazon listing, there seems to be a FixMeStick available for Mac as well.
Verdict
If you’re frequently scanning a computer for malware, and want to reduce the effort on your part, you may want to consider the FixMeStick. If, however, it’s more of an occasional task, I would instead set up a decent liveUSB stick with a persistence so you can run your updates.
I can’t say that the FixMeStick did anything better than the liveUSBs I’ve used in the past, but it did definitely require less effort on my part. If that’s worth the price to you, go for it.