Why does scanning take so long?

Scanning your entire hard drive could take an hour or longer. This depends upon many factors, including:

·         The speed of your computer’s processor

·         The size of your hard drive

·         The speed of your hard drive

·         The number of files on your hard drive

·         The extent of fragmentation on your hard drive

·         Your patience

So it’s hard to say how long it should take, but here’s why it takes so long. . . .

There are over 60,000 known viruses today, and your antivirus program has “signatures” on each one of them in your computer’s virus definition file.

When your antivirus program scans for viruses, it opens each of the over ten thousand files on your computer, and examines each one for the presence of all of these viruses.

Can online scan programs be trusted?

How can one be sure that the online virus scanning tool is doing what it’s supposed to, and nothing else?

Personally, I put more trust in an antivirus program that I buy at the local computer retailer than I do in an online virus-scanning program. But only a tiny bit more.

True, you have to have faith to connect to the Internet, and you have to have some level of trust just to use the Internet. So I’ll compromise and tell you this: You can trust the online scanning tools offered by the major antivirus makers, as long as

·         You have security patches installed (one or more patches have addressed the problem associated with knowing what Web site you are actually visiting).

·         You do not visit the online scan Web page by clicking a URL in an unsolicited mail message. You do not want to be a victim of one of those “phishing” scams!

·         You do not use Phil and George’s Most Excellent Online Virus Scanning Tool and Mail-Order Sushi to scan your computer. Stick with reputable brands.