Nod32 Trial - Some Questions.

After reading through the Installation Guide and Blackspear’s Extra Settings thread, I installed and configured the Nod32 trial copy and following a period of familiarisation, I have developed a real liking for the program. However, there are a couple of issues that still have me a little puzzled.

The first concerns the Control Center Profile for the On-Demand (Manual) Scanner. The ‘Scanning targets’ window comprises two panes, (a) Disks and (b) Folders and files. My query here is if, say, C disk is selected for scanning would not all folders/files on that drive be scanned and why then is there a need to have to again specifically identify some for attention?. BTW what constitutes “Personal Folders” and how is Nod32 able to determine scanning targets from such a generalised setting?

My second query relates to the actual on-demand scanning function itself. The first scan I ran I used the default settings and was indeed surprised when only 56,000 files were scanned. With other antivirus programs I have used, I have been use to 200,000 plus objects being included in the scan. My problem here I guess, is one of confidence in the ability of Nod32 to adequately screen the drive for malware infections when scanning is restricted to such a limited number of files.

I ran another scan using the settings (with the exception of ‘Advanced heuristic’) recommended by Blackspear and this time the program scanned 234,000 objects but took 1 hour 55 minutes to complete. While I recognize running such a thorough scan from time-to-time would be good practice, I would not want to do this every week particularly when in the past I have been use to antivirus checks taking between 30 and 45 minutes to cover a slightly less number of objects.

Any advice which might help enlighten on these matters would be most appreciated.

To conclude and purely as an observation and for what its worth, if I do decide to purchase Nod32, the prospect of uninstalling the trial program and going through the rigmarole of installing and configuring the program again, does not enthuse me. Why would it not be possible to program Nod32 so that a trial copy could be converted to a licensed copy by the purchase and use of a key, similar to so many other applications?

 

Quite simply to prevent licence circumvention (piracy).

 

lol but that wont go to stop piracy at all, is really painful start do all over again

 

Can anyone assist, please?

 

You correctly understand the uses for the two different panes. If you select C disk then there is no need to further specify files or folders in the lower pane to simple scan all of drive C.
I understand that the Personal Folders selection comes from the system variable. Personal Folders could be located almost anywhere on your PC or a network, but the system variable still points to them. If this was not changed from default however, it could be something like 'C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.pst'

You certainly dont NEED to scan your entire system weekly - if you did it would be set up as a default option, but it certainly is NICE.
The theory behind it goes something like this - Any file that NOD32 is capable of detecting as a threat will be acted upon by AMON at an attemp to open or execute it. A weekly scan is simply an operation to check your files ahead of any attemp to open or execute them. So long as AMON is correctly configured you've really got full protection from anything that NOD32 can detect.

As far as the time for scanning goes and the number of files, it really comes down to this - how fast is your system, and how thoroughly were the files checked previously with the other AV software? Just because a lot of files were checked it does not necessarily follow that they were thoroughly checked.

If you run a scan with all the 'Scan' settings and only 'Signatures' in the ThreatSense scanning options, how long does it take then?

Really this is one of the best things about NOD32 - you can configure it. If it's not suitable for your situation to have such a thorough check then configure a less vigorous one. So long as AMON is active and configured to protect you from the threats you want to be protected from, your really sitting pretty sweet IMHO

 

Personal folders belong to MS Outlook and are accessed via MAPI. Disabling MAPI in the on-demand scanner setup will remove it from the list.

 

Just for comparison,
on one of my systems with ALL options selected except for 'list all files' I get the following

Scan performed at: 20/01/2006 0:59:41 AM
Date: 20.1.2006 Time: 01:02:21
Scanned disks, folders and files: A:; C:; D:; E:; M:; N:; S:; T:; U:; V:; Z:
....
Number of scanned files: 626049
Number of threats found: 0
Time of completion: 02:39:27
Total scanning time: 5826 sec (01:37:06)

 

Thanks Marcos - I'm glad to learn another new thing

 

Thank you Marcos.

Cheers

 

Marcos Thanks for clarifying the matter of the ‘Personal Folder’ as appearing in the Scanner targets window. It would seem that others may have benefited from the information as well.

NOD32 User Thank you very much for your informative responses and for your time and trouble. Your coverage of the scanning feature in particular, has been most helpful and has assisted me in gaining a better understanding of how this feature functions in Nod32.