Hi all,
When a machine (say, a windows machine) is suspected to be infected by malware, is it sufficient to scan it by only one anti-virus (for example, by Kaspersky) or we should scan that machine with multiple anti-viruses?
thanks.
First question would be "What makes you think it is infected with Malware?" I would in any case always scan with the free version of Malwarebytes
Generally speaking, you are best advised to scan with a few anti-malware software if thats practical. In addition, you are sometimes better off scanning from outside the Windows boot environment, depending on the type of malware using something like this:
Windows Defender Offline
I have read and heard several times that using two anti virus programs at once ( AVG and Norton for example ) can cause false positives and also slow down the system, since both programs are competing for the same resources. I would advise using one anti-virus program, one anti malware program and even a rootkit scanner. A combination of malwarebytes, Kaspersky and a good firewall should suffice. Windows 7 has a solid firewall built-in but the GUI isn't that great, but you can get a GUI program such as Windows Firewall Control, which can help set rules and administer the Windows 7 firewall.
Let me re-phrase my comment. There isn't a single anti-malware product available today that will be 100% effective 100% of the time. If there was such a thing we'd all be using it. So using multiple "on-demand" scanners means one product might catch some malware that other products missed.
The difference between an on-demand scanner and a real-time scanner is what crankypenguin was referring to. Real-time scanners are always on and always monitoring/scanning your computer for malware. If you have more than one real-time product on your machine, they may scan each other and see each other as a threat. This can slow down a computer or even cause it to crash in extreme circumstances.
On-demand scanners are "off' until you tell them to scan your computer. Since they are off by default, they don't interfere with each other or with a real-time scanner.
Hope this clarifies my comment and I apologize for any confusion.
Thank you very much Dear marsmimar & thanks for all other nice guys.
I have a talk for most of you my friends. My mean for my question was not to use more than one anti-virus running on a machine! It was that when a machine is infected, is the best solution this that scanning it by one anti-virus and then uninstall that anti-virus and install another one to be sure that all kinds of maware have been killed?
Thanks again.
Any more related idea to my issue is very welcome.
Last edited by khoshtipi; 23 Apr 2013 at 15:18.
installing the new antivirus in infected system is like adding medicine to poison, means antivirus too get infected. Once system get infected, scan the hard disk as secondary(files from that hard disk should not get executed) is one among the solution else manually have to remove the malware using tools.
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