Manual scans necessary?

  • Thread starter Thread starter History Fan
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History Fan

I have a desktop PC running XP Home SP2. My anti-virus software is
Avast 4.5 free edition. I leave the AV running all the time, even when I
install programs, with automatic updates turned on. My PC is turned on in
the morning, and turned off at night. That being said, is there any reason
to run a manual AV scan? And if so, how often?
 
To answer my own question, I suppose one reason to do a manual scan is
that new virus definitions might help detect a virus on your PC that the old
ones missed.
 
History said:
I have a desktop PC running XP Home SP2. My anti-virus software is
Avast 4.5 free edition. I leave the AV running all the time, even when I
install programs, with automatic updates turned on. My PC is turned on in
the morning, and turned off at night. That being said, is there any reason
to run a manual AV scan? And if so, how often?
Click to expand...

Other than for peace of mind? I'd recommend manually scanning any new
files or programs you intend to run on your system. On access scanning
sometimes isn't efficient in stopping malware, once it is executed. Be
proactive.
 
History said:
To answer my own question, I suppose one reason to do a manual scan is
that new virus definitions might help detect a virus on your PC that the old
ones missed.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't your on-access scanner then pick up viral activity once the new
definitions were loaded? But, then it's too late. Scan files and
programs manually *before* you intend to run them.
 
I have a desktop PC running XP Home SP2. My anti-virus software is
Avast 4.5 free edition. I leave the AV running all the time, even when I
install programs, with automatic updates turned on. My PC is turned on in
the morning, and turned off at night. That being said, is there any reason
to run a manual AV scan? And if so, how often?
Click to expand...

IMHO: YES

Just, resident AV programs usually scan any files that are created,
modifyed, or executed. If you down load a set of files that had a new
virus, the resident program wouldn't pick it up. Now lets say that
the infected file was never run, something you would get back to. A
few AV updates later, and with a manual scan now and then, you could
detect that infected file way before you ever executed it and infected
your machine. Now that is a what if, but I remember when the fastest
virus types that were spreading were boot sector viruses, all because
now and then we left a floppy in our a: drive after shutting down.

A virus only needs an opportunity to infect, and that is usually give
with laziness...

hth,

tom @ www.URLBee.com
 
History said:
I have a desktop PC running XP Home SP2. My anti-virus software is
Avast 4.5 free edition. I leave the AV running all the time, even when I
install programs, with automatic updates turned on. My PC is turned on in
the morning, and turned off at night. That being said, is there any reason
to run a manual AV scan? And if so, how often?
Click to expand...
You can set your screen saver to the avast one and it will scan your
machine whenever it goes into ss. I use eScan,Sysclean and Jotti's
online for backup scanning.I have links on my site.
-max
--
Keeping Windows Clean: http://www.geocities.com/maxpro4u/madmax.html
Virus Cleaning+Fixes: http://www.geocities.com/maxpro4u/TechPros
Change nomail.afraid.org to neo.rr.com so you can reply by e-mail
(nomail.afraid.org has been set up specifically for
use in Usenet. Feel free to use it yourself.)
 
History Fan said:
I have a desktop PC running XP Home SP2. My anti-virus software is
Avast 4.5 free edition. I leave the AV running all the time, even when I
install programs, with automatic updates turned on. My PC is turned on in
the morning, and turned off at night. That being said, is there any reason
to run a manual AV scan? And if so, how often?
Click to expand...

Do you take a daily blood test, as well as urine and saliva tests, then
mammography, and perhaps a daily biopsy too? Sounds idiotic to you? Well, it
is!

The whole concept of scanning is flawed, just as is daily running of the above
tests.

On-demand AV scan should be run when your protection system alerts that there
might be something wrong, or as part of a cleaning process.

Regards, Zvi
 
Do you take a daily blood test, as well as urine and saliva tests, then
mammography, and perhaps a daily biopsy too? Sounds idiotic to you? Well, it
is!

The whole concept of scanning is flawed,
Nonsense.

just as is daily running of the above
tests.
Click to expand...
On-demand AV scan should be run when your protection system alerts that there
might be something wrong, or as part of a cleaning process.
Click to expand...

More nonsense. Or rather marketing hype and bullshit. The concept of
"protection system" is flawed. A very high degree of security can be
obtained without adding a bunch of useless "protection" software.
Then there is never a need for cleaning.

Part of real security is to back up completly to a cloned hard drive
on a removeable tray. Before backup, just to make sure your system is
truly secured, you might update and run good scanners such as
AdAware, SpyBot and KAV. But they'll never find anything on a secured
system that doesn't use worthless "protection" software.


Art
http://www.epix.net/~artnpeg
 
Zvi Netiv a écrit :
The whole concept of scanning is flawed,
Click to expand...

What do you suggest as a replacement? How else am I supposed to find out
if the program I just downloaded and intend to run contains something
malicious?

Don't say "practice safe hex". I'm talking about something that can be
used in addition to the usual safe hex recommendations.
 
Zvi Netiv said:
The whole concept of scanning is flawed, ... [snip]
Click to expand...

A controversial statement. The current implementation has many flaws, but is the whole concept flawed?
On-demand AV scan should be run when your protection system alerts that there
might be something wrong, or as part of a cleaning process.
Click to expand...

Using an on-demand AV scanner only as a cleanup tool may sound like a defeatist attitude, but who these days can even
identify the ingress vectors that malware uses. On-access scanning attempts to control a place where most malware must
exist at some point in its cycle - as a file being accessed by the OS. With on-access scanning the user doesn't have to know
what files to scan and how they are placed in the filesystem's structure in the first place, and with "protection systems" they
can throw most other "best practices" (like user education) out the window too.
 
Frederic said:
Zvi Netiv a écrit :
Click to expand...

Frequent full disk scanning may be overkill, for those of us who
understand and practice safe hex.
What do you suggest as a replacement? How else am I supposed to find out
if the program I just downloaded and intend to run contains something
malicious?
Click to expand...

When you download a program (or get an email attachment) save it to
your "suspicious" directory, right-click on it and scan it with your
a-v program. Common sense. If it's clean, move it to a more apt
storage location.
 
Beauregard T. Shagnasty a écrit :
When you download a program (or get an email attachment) save it to your
"suspicious" directory, right-click on it and scan it with your a-v
program.
Click to expand...

Wait... "the whole concept of scanning is flawed", you know. :-)
 
Zvi Netiv wrote:
[snip]
Do you take a daily blood test, as well as urine and saliva tests, then
mammography, and perhaps a daily biopsy too? Sounds idiotic to you? Well, it
is!
Click to expand...

interesting take... and if we're only worried about the computer's
'health' that would be appropriate, but if you're concerned about
_security_ then a more security-related analogy is required...
The whole concept of scanning is flawed, just as is daily running of the above
tests.
Click to expand...

so you like to say, again and again... why is it critics (be they virus
writers or otherwise - though i've heard it a lot from virus writers -
raid in particular) insist on calling *limitations* 'flaws'? that a
scanner can't do everything, that it can't work perfectly in all
circumstances is not a flaw, it is a limitation... all things have
limitations... there is no panacea...
On-demand AV scan should be run when your protection system alerts that there
might be something wrong, or as part of a cleaning process.
Click to expand...

or as part of a filtration process, or when you gain the ability to
test for new things...

the main reason for regular on-demand scans is because you regularly
gain the ability to test for new things (or at least you should,
because you should be updating regularly)... in some cases it's
impractical to perform full system scans as frequently as the
anti-virus is updated, and in other cases it's not...
 
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