Virus scans?

Once a year, when I update to a new AV subscription. Avast Home works well. No bug since 2000. Of course I would scan the PC for bugs if it acts funny.

 

~snipped for stoking the fire....Bubba~

I have KAV running all the time so

I see no reason for a full scan every day that;

a) doesn't find anything
b) stresses out my hard drive for no good reason
c) a virus/trojan that becomes active should be intercepted by KAV in real-time and if it wouldn't than a full scan wouldn't change that.
d) never got a virus since 1987
e) I know how to avoid getting them in the first place

 

I don't even run the AV in full-time protection mode. Inexperienced PC users should scan the PC once a month, because they haven't developed the good habits necessary to ward-off PC bugs.

 

~snipped for stoking fire....Bubba~

 

I run a full scan with KAV once a month. As i have it running resident, i don't need to run it regular. Once a month is just as a precaution in case something snuck past in between definiton updates. Only a remote possibility, but a possibility none the less.

muf

 

Ok....here's the deal.

I would really like to keep my moderating in moderation....so if we can kindly refrain from stoking the fires and general tit for tat....I'll move along as a mod and follow this thread as a member....Thanks.


So....the question upon us is....How often do you schedule a virus scan ?

I do not schedule a virus scan....in fact I'm not sure when I even scanned last.

 

So now I find out that all this scanning I've been doing is a complete waste of time! It never finds anything anyway and is therefore an unnecessary precaution.

Instead of all these backup scanners perhaps it's best to concentrate on progs like WinPatrol and RegRun which can at least warn you if you have a problem - then you can scan!

 

TopperID,

Scans are diagnostic procedures. Simply because the bill of health comes back clean does not make it a wasted exercise. When I get a physical, and the medical tests come back fine, I don't consider it a waste, probably because they haven't always come back fine. It's no different with your PC.

Most scans find nothing simply because we're looking for a very infrequent occurrence. As some have pointed out above, the realtime monitor should catch virtually everything that passes it's way, and that's typically a third line defence after a NAT/SPI router and perhaps a firewall. Demand scanning is a step further back in the chain and it's used for either the retrospective analysis or more detailed examination at higher sensitivity settings. If you are seeing more action at this level, and they are real bits of malware and not false positives, then something is likely wrong with your configuration.

As you can gather from the discussion above, there's by no means a single opinion here. The strategies followed by the limited number of respondents vary quite widely. It's not that one scheme is better than another, it's that some are more risk adverse than others. We all have our tolerance levels. I like a frequent check for a host of reasons. Others don't. I don't believe that I'm wasting my time, nor do I believe those that scan once a month or once a year are courting certain disaster. For me, it's not lost time, it's not wearing the equipment out over the expected time to obsolescence - which is shorter than mean lifetime in my hands, and it's done in off-hours. For the infrequent scanner, I'll simply say my mean period between meaningful infections for me has been around 5-8 years/incident. It's very infrequent, so I can see their perspective, but when it occurs I want to deal with it as soon as possible.

There are no right answers on this topic, only a set of approaches that balance risk/benefit/insurance differently, but hopefully consistent with each users expectations.

Blue

 

I use NOD32 as realtime-protect.
I do the virus scan infrequently, but if I have symptoms of an infection, or I think a virus come into my system, I'll do a full scan.

 

Blue is dead right.

What suits one, may not be for the other.

Primarily, it depends on your set-up and surfing habits.

Now, if you are like me, mainly security forums etc. and some very reliable sites, then my regime of 4-6 weeks is fine. [As I stated above, for me]

But evey now and then I venture into a crack/hacker site, looking for some trojans, etc. to test, then I scan immediately I have finished with everything in my arsenal to be doubly sure even though running RTMs.

On the other hand, if you are into online gaming, P2P, etc etc. I would wear gloves on my hands and scan at least 2-3 times per week.

Only you can decide what is right for you.

Cheers, TAS

 

Yes, I guess it's a question of getting the right balance. In normal useage I never experience any interjections from my AV guard; but I use my machine for entertainment not buisness and there are times when I have Googled my way to some pretty dodgy sites! If you are surfing in shark infested waters you need all the protection you can get!

If my AV has suddenly popped up messages saying it has detected and deleted this or that virus, then I think it is sensible to scan with a backup scanner just for reassurance. But that doesn't happen too often so I think it is safe to cut down on some of the routine scans I have been doing.

Having said that, I do read some pretty hair-raising stuff on these sites that deal with HJT logs and you do wonder what people have been doing to get hammered like that. It's better to be safe than sorry, so I think I will be doing routine scans more often than once a year!