Online virus scan..

[Jason1971]

Just wondering what you guys and girls think of online virus scanning? I use Trend Micro's free online virus scanner. Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.


Thanks
Jason

[mjc]

I would not rely on any online scan as a primary method of AV control. All of them are about the same, IMO, they are a great second opinion/emergency/backup scanner.

[Budfred]

Ditto.... I have never actually used one because I keep my AV up to date and active with firewall protection and MailWasher at the gate for email. I also run Spybot regularly and occasionally run AdAware. I don't cruise sites prone to malware either. Consequently I haven't had to deal with an infection....yet. If I did, I would certainly use an online scan as a backup.

I helped a friend who had a Klez infection and he had already run a copy of Norton AV he bought for the purpose. I ended up having to reformat and start over with his system. If I knew then what I know now, I would have zero'd out the hard drive, powered down the system, reset the CMOS and then reloaded. His puter died a couple of months after I got it set up again and I never could figure out if it was from natural causes or the Klez had done some BIOS damage that got it eventually.

When you want to try to avoid the complete reinstall, the online virus scan is a nice way to get a better idea of whether or not the system is really clean. An AV installed on the computer can be corrupted by some malware and is made ineffective...

Sorry for rambling a bit...