Is it necessary to do a full virus scan if you are uninfected, or very positive you are not infected?
I just do quick virus scans in Microsoft Security Essentials, and Malwarebytes on a weekly basis, but I don't really see a need to scan my MP3, video, document, and non-system, files on a daily or weekly basis since most of the files I made my self, ripped from CDs and YouTube videos, etc. I probably do Full scans once every few months, or once a year, and my results come back good since the report says uninfected.
I usually just put them all my non-system files like MP3, documents, pictures, and video on my Secondary D partition or drive, and just scan my C:\ Drive where Windows is installed.
Re: Are full virus scan neccessary when your not infected?
Is it also necessary to scan USB hard drives once a week as well if they are rarely plug into your computer?
I read that infected files which are not running in your Memory, or actively being ran on a CPU on the computer pose very little danger to your computer, and most web browser and antivirus programs these days are smart enough to scan your downloaded files after they are downloaded from the internet.
I see, how good is the real-time shield for antivirus programs like Kapersky, Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, and Avira these days since aren't they already scanning all of Windows running processes in RAM and CPU?
I'm pretty much the same as you froggy. I use MSE and update it every day and do a Malwarebyte's scan every day. MSE is good, it has stopped a few attacks on my system. I do a full system scan with MSE about once a month. I think it just comes down to what you feel comfortable with. Someone once told me that the best anti-virus is you. I've always been more careful of the site's I visit and what I download since that time. 🙂
The technical answear would be yes since a virus could potentially be anywhere on or off of your computer, depending on if you use any USB drives or the like.
However for a normal everyday user you probably dont absolutly need to scan everything since it is usally unusall for a virus to be in locations other then what the quick scan scans.
In the end its a personal decision but for a computer geek like me I always scan my entire system at least once a month just for my own peace of mind.
Could doing full scan virus scans on a "daily" basis wear out the mechanical parts on motors and heads on mechanical hard drives since full scan virus scans seem to spin up a hard drive very fast making the hard drive light blink a lot during a full scan?
