Malwarebytes Corporation has made available the first public beta of a new Anti-Rootkit tool, which aims to provide a quick and easy way to detect and remove the stealthy malware from your PC.

And as you’d expect from Malwarebytes, the program seems very straightforward and simple to use.

The beta is portable, of course, so there’s no installation required. Unzip the download, run MBAR.EXE and it’s ready to go immediately.

There’s no technical jargon here, either, none of the complexity you’ll often see with other antirootkit tools. The program is just a simple wizard which walks you through three key steps: updating its definitions, scanning your PC for threats, and cleaning them up afterwards.

A wizard-based interface means the program is very simple to use

You get an additional tool which aims to restore functionality which might be damaged by malware (internet access, Windows Update, the Windows Firewall).

And while some rootkit detectors can push the technical limits – we’ve seen them blue-screen PC’s just while trying to find a threat – this one ran smoothly, on our test system at least, and caused no technical problems at all.

The program isn’t perfect, of course (it’s still a beta, after all). It raised multiple false alarms on our test PC, for some reason. And we didn’t test its cleanup abilities, which is where the real harm can be done if the program gets something wrong.

This isn’t a tool for the PC novice, then. But if you’re an experienced Windows user, maybe a Malwarebytes fan who wants to see what they’re doing next, Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit has plenty to explore. Be sure to check out the documentation (the bundled ReadMe.rtf file), too – there’s plenty of interesting details there.