FixMeStick ... Is this junk or actually a good virus removal product?

[DaveLembke]

Talked him into bringing it in for me to test out...

Question i have now is... is there a good source to intentionally infect a spare system of mine and then see how this software handles it? Its not every day that someone wants to infect their spare computer, but just curious if there is a website out there where you can download safely as a zip some nasties and then unzip them onto the spare system to intentionally infect and run a script that tells them all to wake up and do their magic on that spare computer, and then hit them with this and see how good or bad it does.

Thinking its to dangerous to have a website linked here with destination to get tools to infect a system intentionally, so it would be best for a link to be provided via PM to me so that we dont have anyone accidentally infecting their computer and then making claim that CH provided a link that cause their computer to get infected etc. 

I use to get all sorts of nasties to play with when I use to run a honeypot on the DMZ as a means to get copies of tools and nasty programs when hackers hit my honeypot unaware that its a honeypot and they are wasting their time on it, but leaving nasties behind for me to play with in sandboxed environment offline. Thinking there is a better method to self infect a system other than just putting a system online with intentional vulnerabilities waiting for someone to bite at it and infect it.

[patio]

I think you guys are missing the point of the thing.  The target demographic for this thing is not geeks who hang out on computer forums.  It's "joe user" who has no idea how to remove a virus.  $60 does seem like a steep price to pay though for simply being an ignorant user.

Wasn't lost on me at all...

[patio]

Talked him into bringing it in for me to test out...

Try Eicar...remember it from back in the day...

[Salmon Trout]

Try Eicar...remember it from back in the day...

I sent him a PM about this.

[Salmon Trout]

One possibility is well-known false positives such as the Nirsoft password revealer, which many anti-malware apps flag up, or compiled Autoit scripts, which trigger many alerts because they use the UPX packager.

[patio]

He could always update to Win 10...that'll bring up tons of flags....

[Geek-9pm]

One critical review found on Amazon

ByQueen Estheron November 4, 2014
I recently began to see warnings that Malwarebytes and Norton internet security were blocking malware on my computer from contacting malicious websites. Although the activity was blocked neither were detecting the malware in scans. Also multiple com surrogate processes were running on my machine and using most of the resources. After some research I learned of Fixmestick and purchased it from amazon. I ran a scan and it told me it had removed and quarantined 13 trojans. Upon rebooting my computer, however, the same malware warnings and com surrogate processes began to appear again. I called Fixmestick and they told me that 13 browser hijacker Trojans had been removed but that changes they had made to the internet browsers needed to be corrected manually. They sent me instructions for making the corrections. I attempted to make the corrections to the browsers but the instructions did not match some of the features of the browsers so I could not. In the meantime the warnings and com surrogates began to appear again. I called Fixmestick support and they hooked up remotely to my computer. To my surprise after making a few tweaks to the browsers and removing a couple of bloatware programs that had been on the machine for 3 years before these problems developed, They then ran a 30 day free trial version of a third part malware scanner to look for what Fixmestick missed. It found nothing. No manual virus removal methods were used (e.g. looking for and fixing problems in the registry) nor were any specialized in-house tools used. I didn’t see much expertise in malware removal. With respect to the 13 trojans removed by fixmestick; I looked in the quarantine file and none were identified as trojans. 10 of the 13 were Norton setup and download manager files. I asked fixmestick to explain that and they said that the Trojans don’t show up in the quarantine folder named as such but what I as seeing was infected files. I suspect these were false detections. Every other malware detection I have employed has identified the malware by name. Also, some of the “infected” files were downloads of Norton virus removal tools that I had downloaded to address the problems I was experiencing and could not have been the source of the problem. I was pleased with the friendliness and availability of Fixmestick support but that was the only amazing aspect of it. The methods employed and outcome were disappointing. I still have the trojan, multiple com surrogate processes, and an almost useless computer. I have returned this for a refund and would not recommend it to anyone.
Read more

https://www.amazon.com/FixMeStick-Virus-Removal-Device-Unlimited/product-reviews/B006ZCHVM2?pageNumber=4

I found that PC Mag gave a rather positive review.
I should stop reading that rag. 

There is a lot of free stuff that is better.
Anvi Rescue Disk. © Anvisoft Corporation. ...
AVG Rescue CD. © AVG Technologies. ...
Avira Rescue System. © Avira Operations GmbH & Co. ...
Bitdefender Rescue CD. © Bitdefender. ...
Comodo Rescue Disk. ...
Dr.Web LiveDisk. ...
F-Secure Rescue CD. ...
Kaspersky Rescue Disk

https://www.lifewire.com/free-bootable-antivirus-tools-2625785