Antivirus Software

[Kenneth H. Young]

What is the best way in VB to determine if an antiviral software package is
installed on a computer and what product it is?

 

[Peter Huang [MSFT]]

Hi

There is no general approach to detected all the antivirus software.
An antivirus software is an application or windows service too.

We can check it in the Process List or registry commonly.
Usually every antivirus software should have a defined name of Process.
e.g.
We can use the approach below if the specially process is lauched.
Process.GetProcessesByName Method

Best regards,

Peter Huang
Microsoft Online Partner Support

Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

 

[Lau Lei Cheong]

I believe the easiest is to check to see if the registry entries for a
particular antivirus package exist...

Since the is information avaliable from the security control center of WinXP
SP2 or so, there is possibly other more official way to query it, but from
the perspective of not letting virus writer to have way to identify
antivirus programs(even non-famous ones), they may not publish it. I have no
idea...