Pros and Cons of Leaving Infected Files in Quarantine

[Zonnie]

My friend has a Dell Latitude laptop with Win-XP upgraded from Win-ME.

The PC has current Norton AV with definitions updated to April 7, 2004. In the NAV Reports folder there are 65 infected items displayed in quarantine status including the following obvious viruses:

w32.bugbear.b.dam <=== 1 file
w32.klez.h@mm <=== 4 files
w32.netsky.b@mm <=== 13
w32.netsky.c@mm <=== 5
w32.netsky.d@mm <=== 8
w32.netsky.p@mm <=== 18
w32.swen.a.@mm <=== 1

The remaining files are bat, pif, scr,exe, zip. The quarantines date back to January 14, 2003.

QUESTIONS:

Should I leave these in quarantine?...or delete if possible using NAV.
Should I use a removal tool to get rid of the viruses, if NAV can't do it.

Oddly enough, NAV help does not address the pros and cons of leaving files in quarantine.

[Mudd]

If they are in quarantine they effectively have been removed from your system or never got into your files. Why take a chance and leave them there. Delete at the first opportunity. You won't need a removal tool as they are not "installed" so to speak in your PC. Would have been had it not been for the Virus program.

I don't see why they put a Quarantine folder there in the first place. Either clean it and delete the Virus or delete the file with the Virus on the spot.

My opinion.

[mikoyan]

Files in Quarantine are treated by AV and not accessible by system. If everythings works fine, delete the files in Q. I have even read somewhere, that not deleting Quarantine especially in Norton slows down system.

[bigc73542]

Unless it is an infected file that you have in quarantine that you are going to send for analaysis, you should delete it right away. It is not doing any good just sitting there. ;)


bigc

[dangitall]

I've noticed that, on occasion, NAV has difficulty in removing files from its Quarantine. If you run into this, note the path to the file(s) in question and use Shift-Delete to get rid of them; you may have to do this from SafeMode (this has happened to me once, with a trojan on a friend's machine).