System start up scan

I posted this in the wrong section earlier.....

what is system start up scan? and what does it really scan? everything or just the changes?
is it OK if I turn it off? Thanks for all the help....

 

A system startup scan will scan files commonly associated with the Windows boot process or the user's logon. It will run after each signature update and while a user logs on. If optimized scanning is enabled (is by default), only files that have not been scanned or modified since the last signature update will be scanned. This scan is useful in notifying the user if they are currently infected with a virus that previous signatures were not detecting, as such an infection could go unnoticed until the next system reboot when those files are re-loaded in to memory. I would strongly recommend you to leave it enabled.

 

First of all... thanks alot for your response. I have a few follow up questions.


I have checked the stat up scans. With the real time protection enabled, how often would your recommend I run full system scans? I think ESET calls them "On Demand" scans. Is once a week acceptable? (I know, this may depend from person to person). How often do you run them?

In theory shouldn't real time protection take care of majority of the problems?

 

Honestly, there isn't a lot of benefit to on-demand scans on a desktop. We run them once every 6 months on the desktop systems because it will clean up the dropper agents and whatnot that collect in the IE cache and temp directories. Real-time scanning and the startup scanner will check everything that is getting launched in to memory. If the signatures miss those, then running a full disk scan isn't going to be doing you a lot of good since it can't see the active trojan/malware/whatever getting launched in to memory and messing your system up.

On servers we run a full disk scan once a month, since any left over dropper agents and whatnot there will indicate to us that either someone was trying to hack the server or something was using it to surf websites, which isn't something we really want happening in our environment.

 

Thank you fo ra great explanation sir... much appreciated