How Does Antivirus Software Work?
Brand new computers work safely and with decent performance at first. Continuous use of safe and trusted websites, removal storage and other devices from known sources keeps your mind at ease from having viruses. Though lately, new viruses appear to be legitimate even though they are not. A single click on legitimate-looking link can put you at risk requiring your computer to have antivirus software.
Most computers users do not like to install an antivirus software since they don’t know the importance of that software believing that it can just slow down the computer system. Therefore it is important to know how these anti-virus programs function in order to better understand the benefits.
When antivirus software is successfully installed, it automatically runs upon startup. These software should really run a scan even in the background to check the system for possible malicious activities. This is known as "Real-time Protection" that provides the first layer of protection against viruses.
If ever a virus is detected while the "Real-time protection" is active, it will be either deleted or cleansed depending on the type of virus. There are virus scanners that pop up a notification window to ask the user about the proper action to take. These are good signs of an effective virus scanner to let you know that it protects the computer.
To open the virus scanner window, just double click the icon on the system tray or simply click it from the Start menu. From there, manual scans can be performed which could be necessary when multiple drives need to be scanned for viruses including any removable disks. Once the scan is complete, a detailed report about the infected files and types of viruses is shown to provide more information. Just like "Real-time protection", it is the user’s decision if the infected file will be deleted or not.
Some scanners have different kinds of scanning options with the "Quick Scan" being the most common and frequently used by novice computer users because of the speed and convenience. Although quick scan works differently on many virus scanners, it still scans the commonly infected areas or computer drives to automatically carry out certain actions without user’s interaction.
Most viruses can be easily cleaned while the rest are deleted and moved to the “Quarantine” folder. Infected files stay on the quarantine folder which is a safe place for viruses and they are inaccessible until you bring it out of this quarantined area. This enables you to take out the clean files that has been flagged as a virus even though it is not (called “"False Positives”).
Some of the better anti-virus software out there protects your system by performing scheduled quick scans that can be configured in the options. The three different scanning abilities of antivirus software gives your computer more protection against viruses and Trojans provided that it stays updated through the online updating system.
