[Bellator]

I currently use avast! antivirus on my system. lately I've been disabling the resident scanner and all the background services, like auto-updates, mail/web scanning, etc. I have instead been running a weekly manual update/scan.

My windows loads noticeably faster, and general performance seems to be a little faster (maybe not night and day, but a little quicker). Am I taking a big risk by only doing a manual scan once a week? I guess my concern is I may dl an infected file, have it start to infect my system, and not realize it until i run the manual scan... by which time the damage may be extensive. Do viruses have to be executed by the user, or once downloaded can they execute themselves? Also what filetypes besides .exe can they be hidden?

Sometimes if I dl questionable content I run a quick scan on the downloads folder before opening any of the files... but if they can execute themselves...

Tanx!

[Matth]

If you are certain your Internet/Email security is good enough to prevent unexpected arrivals, then "sheep dipping" anything new, and regularly scanning the entire system may do.

Being online is the problem though, unless you have it locked down so tight the pips squeak.

The opposite question, for those who keep on-access scanning enabled, is "can you manage without ever doing a full scan" - and the answer to that is "probably not" - not least of which being the fact that some on-access scanners can validate against a recent full scan to save time.

[Bellator]

hmm, well I do use Zonealarm as a firewall, as well as firefox over IE... so I'm less worried about malicious contacts through my internet connection that I have not directly downloaded. And with hitman pro, which is an incredibly exhaustive antispyware/adware tool, im also less worried about spyware/adware..

that's interesting what you mention about the resident scanner not being a substitute for a manual full scan, I had always assumed resident protection was more bulletproof than a manual scan from time to time.

There's also an incredible assortment of utilities explicitly for trojan/rootkit scanning... are these tools really necessary in addition to virus scan, firewall, antispyware tools?