To get started downloaded the 40+ Megabyte standalone file from the Kaspersky website. You can run it right after you have downloaded the program.
Hit the "run diagnostics" button on the front page. You can furthermore click on the question mark or main menu icon to open a help document.
The scan should not take longer than a couple of minutes on most systems. Kaspersky notes that an Internet connection is required for the program to work fully, but it won't send traces or dump files to Kaspersky without user confirmation.
The report lists issues on the first page that is opened. Icons are used by the program to indicate the the level of issues. Red items are critical and blue items non-critical.
The main issue that you may run into on this page is that the listed issues may not always reveal enough information on the issue.
For instance, the first one told me that the displaying of drives is limited in windows Explorer. The description read: Disk loss in Windows Explorer seriously hampers the ability of the user to work with their applications and data. This problem is usually caused by active malware. Failure to correct the problem causes the loss of essential apps or user files.
The second issue is equally hard to figure out: Device manager problem detect. Unknown device has error. Device drivers are not installed (Code 28). It lists a button at least to open the Windows Device Manager.
The program leaves you alone with most of the issues that it finds. Even experienced users may have a hard time figuring out how to find out more about some of the issues that Kaspersky System Checker found during its diagnostics scan of the Windows PC.
Other issues were fixed easily. The program notified me that the system's User Account Control feature was disabled. It linked to the system applet, and indeed it was set to "never notify". This allowed me to change the setting to the default value and be done with it.
The program shines in these situations as it provides you with information on issues and an easy option to resolve it (if desired). The main issue however is that it does not provide actionable information on all issues.
The scan results list two additional tabs with information. The first, system info, lists information about the scanned system. This includes among other things hardware information and browser extensions, but also a list of programs, recently installed programs, large programs, and infrequently used programs.
Additional info finally lists all non-critical issues that Kaspersky System Checker found during its can of the system.
The items listed on this page suffer from the same issue as the critical items listing. You get basic information on the issues which sometimes are not sufficient when it comes to resolving those issues.
Some provide clear instructions, like running clean manager (which is Disk Cleanup), to free up disk space, or installing the latest version of a program to patch security vulnerabilities.
Others may require research. The issue, process termination timeout is out of admissible value for instance is such a case.
Closing WordsKaspersky System checker is a free standalone systems diagnostic scanner for Windows that may reveal issues to you. While you may be able to fix some of the issues quickly, others lack actionable information. This leaves you with no other choice but to research the issue on the Internet, or try to figure it out yourself.
