Foolproof Virus Check

My special interest is computers. Let's talk geek here.
Post Reply
User avatar
yogi
Posts: 9978
Joined: 14 Feb 2015, 21:49

Foolproof Virus Check

Post by yogi »

How much antivirus protection is enough? One? Two? Three? Ten antivirus programs? How about 55 all at once? I've talked about a program called Virus Total in the past. They have software you can install on your PC plus they have a web site to which you can upload your suspect file for them to check. The check is to run your sample through 55 different antivirus programs and return the results. The idea here is if one check is good, then 55 checks is that many times better. Not perfect, but nearly so.

Effective use of Virus Total depends on you knowing what to send them for evaluation. Most of the time you have no idea, but you know SOMETHING isn't right and your current AV program isn't flagging it. If a virus or malicious software is running, there is a way to see it. Using a program called Process Explorer will show you every process that is currently running on your computer. It will show you a whole lot of other geeky kind of stuff too. The good news is that you don't have to be concerned about any of that technical information because Process Explorer has a way to send every running process to Virus Total for a check. It's a very simple set up procedure and all you need to do is download Process Explorer.

Process explorer does not need to be installed, nor does the VIrus Total program. However, you will need to run Process Explorer as administrator when you want to do your system security check. It will take a minute or two for the check to complete after which the results of the voting will be displayed. If there is a problem the offending process will be highlighted and it can be removed automatically. The best part this is that it's all free and never needs updating. Just run it to see the current state of your system.

The downside is that only currently running malware will be checked. Anything dormant and hiding to be triggered later will not be flagged or checked. There is also the possibility of false positives being displayed. If one or two out of the 55 checks say they see a problem, it's likely to be a false positive. If you get a dozen positives from a dozen sources, then you probably have a bug.

Watch the video in the link to see how simple it all is to set up. I'm very pleased with this approach and would highly recommend it to anyone using Microsoft Windows (any version) and concerned about viruses on their computer.

http://www.csoonline.com/article/301429 ... tk.rss_all
Post Reply