Checking the Health of Your Computer Antivirus Software

Checking the Health of Your
Antivirus Software

After you locate the antivirus software on your computer, you need to “look under the hood” and see whether it appears to be operating properly. Until you are more familiar with your computer and its antivirus software, it’s not wise to assume that your antivirus software is configured and operating correctly. The steps you follow here will accomplish two things:

You will be confirming the important aspects of your antivirus software in order to determine if it’s working right. You will be discovering how your antivirus software is configured and how it operates on your computer. The next sections explain how to make your antivirus software open up and say, “Aaaaah.”


Step 1
Determining whether
your antivirus software
starts at bootup
When you start (“boot”) the computer, the computer’s startup instructions direct several features and programs to begin running. Here are some ways to figure out if antivirus software begins to run on your computer:

Check for a splash screen:
When some of these programs start, they display a splash screen on the computer’s monitor. A splash screen is sort of like a ten-second “look at me, I’m starting!” advertisement. Most, if not all, antivirus tools display some sort of a splash screen when they start. I have included some
antivirus program splash screens The absence of a splash screen does not conclusively
prove the absence of an antivirus program. Some antivirus programs do not have splash screens; also, some programs let you exclude the splash screen display. That said, if you see an antivirus splash screen, it’s a pretty good indicator that your computer has an antivirus program that starts when the computer is started.

_ Look for system-tray icons: The next thing to look for when checking the health of your antivirus software is to look for its system tray icon. The presence of a system tray icon is a pretty good indicator that the antivirus program not only started, but has managed to keep running. You’re not out of the woods yet, though.

Can you see the status: Now you need to see if you can coax the antivirus program to show you a detailed status and configuration screen. How to do this will vary somewhat depending on which antivirus software program is running on your computer. Here are a few things you can try:

Step 2: Determining the version
of antivirus software
On the splash screen, system tray icon, or desktop icon — or on the program’s status screen — you should see the brand name of the antivirus software. Or you can start the antivirus program and choose Help➪About. You want to get the version name and number of the software too. There are a couple of reasons to do this. If you know what make and version of antivirus software you have, you can visit the software maker’s Web site and get more information about the product: You can find help in the form of support information, frequently-asked questions, and how-to instructions for
operating the program. Also, in general, you can find answers to other questions when you know what make and version your antivirus software is. For instance, you may need to find out how to configure another program if part of that program’s configuration depends on which antivirus program you’re using.

Step-3

Figuring out when the last update occurred
The most important thing to figure out when you’re workingwith existing antivirus software is when the program’s virus definitions were last updated. Depending on which antivirus program you have, this might be displayed on the configuration screen. If not, it could be in Help➪About, or in the About option from the system tray. Every antivirus program displays this information a little differently. You gotta love the consistency between the different antivirus programs. If the date of the last update is within the past couple of weeks, then you can be pretty sure that your antivirus software is working okay, at least up to that date. Also, provided that your antivirus software is configured properly, you’ll be protected against all but the very latest viruses. If, on the other hand, the date of the last update is older than a few weeks, then you need to update your virus-definition
files as soon as possible Many antivirus programs will give you the dates of your most recent last update, last scan, and program version if you choose Help➪About.

Step 4: Figuring out when the last scan occurred
While you’re checking out your antivirus program, you also need to figure out when your computer was last scanned for viruses.
Like the date of the last virus-definitions file, the date of the last virus scan is important to know. However, the last scan date is not quite as important as the date of the virus-definition file
update. If the date of the last virus definition update and the date of the last scan are both more than a few weeks in the past, you may be several thousand viruses behind the times (this should not make you feel old). Update your virus definitions first, and then scan the computer for viruses.

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