Is it really okay to run on-demand scanner while using our pc?

I am just wondering if it is really ok to run other programs on our pc while the on-demand scanner of our antivirus is running. Coz in the past i used to stop all of my work when I run anti-virus on demand scanner coz it might interfere or not effectively detects viruses.

 

Generally you can run other programs during on-demand scans . However , I don't recommend it since while your scanner is scanning and if you do something else your system may slow down .

I run on-demand scan just once a week and it takes at about 20 min.
I am sure you can watch TV for 20 min

 

Huh? I can wach movie on PC while AV is scanning. Listening to MP3's is no problem and browsing isn't either. Unless i have a super duper computer, though i somehow doubt it...

 

Which antivirus are you using and how many RAM, what CPU do you have?
Generally there is no problem performing multiple tasks on a good computer.

 

You should be able to carry out most of your usual tasks at the same time as your scan. But as pykko has said this may be dependent upon the age of your sytem.

But most AV's now have a scan priority setting; the higher it is the faster the processing, but the lower the performance of other applications. You can therefore play about with this setting.

There are, however, obviously some activities you would not run at the same time as an on-demand scan such as defragging or taking a snapshot of your system.

 

f-secure my current av takes like 2hours on my pc last time i ran it i was using only about 40gb. and now im using 50gb so I dont want to run it to often.

thats why im probaly gonna get kaspersky and use the scan new and changed files only because lets face it why does it need to take two hours scanning everyfile on your hd?

 

I usually do it and it should be even less a problem with a dual core.

 

I am now using the 1yr trial version of eTrust EZ anti-virus, and my machine is Win XP/SP2 Pro, Intel Pentium 4, 2.4Ghz, 256MB RAM.

 

If you have any spare cash, I would think about getting some more memory for your XP system

 

yes...something like 768 MB or above will be perfect.

 

Agree , more RAM will be great ! At least 512 for XP SP2 and 21st century

 

Yes, you can use the PC while using the on-demand scanner. eTrust is pretty
fast and you can set the CPU priority to 'realtime' to make it more faster from
the Task Manager. But everything else will slow down a bit.

No, the detection efficiency won't be affected only the scanning time will be
affected.

 

If the AV is PROPERLY configured and is running in full-time protection mode, then it would generally be a waste of time to run additional full-system scan after the 1st full scan. Logic being if the AV didn't detect the bug initially, then it probably would not detect the bug with on-demand scan.

On demand scan is handy if you want to inspect unknown drive/floppy/CD/DVD.

 

well on-demand scans can be used to catch malware packaged in archives; theyre harmless (until unpacked) but still worth removing.

most AVs wont scan archives in realtime for the sake of performance.