Diagnosis

A Virus Scanner is used for diagnosing the virus, to identify the problems early.

A scan should be run:
  • On new programs and diskettes
  • When an integrity checker reports a mismatch
  • When a generic monitoring program sounds an alarm
  • When you receive an updated version of a scanner

There are two types of scanners: 'Resident' and 'Heuristic'.

Some Resident scanners are McAfee's V-Shield, and F-PROT's VIRSTOP. And some Heuristic scanners are the Analyse option in F-PROT, TBAV's TbScan and ChkBoot.

One should ensure that the version being used is most recent.

A scanner could show two types of errors:

1. False Positive: It is a type of error in which the anti-virus software wrongly detects the presence of a virus, when actually the object is clean.
2. False Negative: It is a type of error in which the anti-virus software wrongly fails to indicate the presence of a virus.

Both are undesirable though a false negative is more harmful. They occur due to the virus being new or heavily modified.

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