Antivirus programs are powerful pieces of software that are essential on Windows computers. If you’ve ever wondered how antivirus programs detect viruses, what they’re doing on your computer, and whether you need to perform regular system scans yourself, read on. An antivirus program is an essential part of a multi-layered security strategy – even if you’re a smart computer user, the constant stream of vulnerabilities for browsers, plug-ins, and the Windows operating system itself make antivirus protection important. On-Access Scanning Antivirus software runs in the background on your computer, checking every file you open. This is generally known as on-access scanning, background scanning, resident scanning, real-time protection, or something else, depending on your antivirus program.
Jan 15, 2008 Terms & Conditions: Using of this Video tutorial ' How To Remove Virus Without Using Anti virus Programs ' Author is not responsible for any damage made to your Desktop Computer,laptops.If you. Antivirus 2009 is a new rogue anti-spyware program from the same family as Antivirus 2008 and Doctor Antivirus. Antivirus 2009 is installed and advertised through the use of misleading web sites.
When you double-click an EXE file, it may seem like the program launches immediately – but it doesn’t. Your antivirus software checks the program first, comparing it to known viruses, worms, and other types of malware. Your antivirus software also does “heuristic” checking, checking programs for types of bad behavior that may indicate a new, unknown virus. Antivirus programs also scan other types of files that can contain viruses. For example, a.zip archive file may contain compressed viruses, or a Word document can contain a malicious macro. Files are scanned whenever they’re used – for example, if you download an EXE file, it will be scanned immediately, before you even open it.
It’s possible to use an antivirus without on-access scanning, but this generally isn’t a good idea – viruses that exploit security holes in programs wouldn’t be caught by the scanner. After a virus has infected your system, it’s much harder to remove.
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(It’s also hard to be sure that the malware has ever been completely removed.) Full System Scans Because of the on-access scanning, it isn’t usually necessary to run full-system scans. If you download a virus to your computer, your antivirus program will notice immediately – you don’t have to manually initiate a scan first.
Full-system scans can be useful for some things, however. A full system scan is helpful when you’ve just installed an antivirus program – it ensures there are no viruses lying dormant on your computer. Most antivirus programs set up scheduled full system scans, often once a week. This ensures that the latest virus definition files are used to scan your system for dormant viruses.
These full disk scans can also be helpful when repairing a computer. If you want to repair an already-infected computer, inserting its hard drive in another computer and performing a full-system scan for viruses (if not doing a complete reinstall of Windows) is useful. However, you don’t usually have to run full system scans yourself when an antivirus program is already protecting you – it’s always scanning in the background and doing its own, regular, full-system scans.
Virus Definitions Your antivirus software relies on virus definitions to detect malware. That’s why it automatically downloads new, updated definition files – once a day or even more often. The definition files contain signatures for viruses and other malware that have been encountered in the wild.
When an antivirus program scans a file and notices that the file matches a known piece of malware, the antivirus program stops the file from running, putting it into “quarantine.” Depending on your antivirus program’s settings, the antivirus program may automatically delete the file or you may be able to allow the file to run anyway, if you’re confident that it’s a false-positive. Antivirus companies have to continually keep up-to-date with the latest pieces of malware, releasing definition updates that ensure the malware is caught by their programs.
Antivirus labs use a variety of tools to disassemble viruses, run them in sandboxes, and release timely updates that ensure users are protected from the new piece of malware. Heuristics Antivirus programs also employ heuristics.
Heuristics allow an antivirus program to identify new or modified types of malware, even without virus definition files. For example, if an antivirus program notices that a program running on your system is trying to open every EXE file on your system, infecting it by writing a copy of the original program into it, the antivirus program can detect this program as a new, unknown type of virus. No antivirus program is perfect. Heuristics can’t be too aggressive or they’ll flag legitimate software as viruses.
False Positives Because of the large amount of software out there, it’s possible that antivirus programs may occasionally say a file is a virus when it’s actually a completely safe file. This is known as a “false positive.” Occasionally, antivirus companies even make mistakes such as identifying Windows system files, popular third-party programs, or their own antivirus program files as viruses. These false positives can damage users’ systems – such mistakes generally end up in the news, as when Microsoft Security Essentials identified Google Chrome as a virus, AVG damaged 64-bit versions of Windows 7, or Sophos identified itself as malware. Heuristics can also increase the rate of false positives. An antivirus may notice that a program is behaving similarly to a malicious program and identify it as a virus. Despite this, false positives are fairly rare in normal use. If your antivirus says a file is malicious, you should generally believe it.
If you’re not sure whether a file is actually a virus, you can try uploading it to (which is now owned by Google). VirusTotal scans the file with a variety of different antivirus products and tells you what each one says about it.
Detection Rates Different antivirus programs have different detection rates, which both virus definitions and heuristics are involved in. Some antivirus companies may have more effective heuristics and release more virus definitions than their competitors, resulting in a higher detection rate.
Some organizations do regular tests of antivirus programs in comparison to each other, comparing their detection rates in real-world use. Regularly releases studies that compare the current state of antivirus detection rates. The detection rates tend to fluctuate over time – there’s no one best product that’s consistently on top. If you’re really looking to see just how effective an antivirus program is and which are the best out there, detection rate studies are the place to look. Testing an Antivirus Program If you ever want to test whether an antivirus program is working properly, you can use the. The EICAR file is a standard way to test antivirus programs – it isn’t actually dangerous, but antivirus programs behave as if it’s dangerous, identifying it as a virus. This allows you to test antivirus program responses without using a live virus.
Antivirus programs are complicated pieces of software, and thick books could be written about this subject – but hopefully this article brought you up to speed with the basics.
Windows Antivirus Pro is a rogue anti-virus program and a ransomware that does not allow you to run any programs on your computer. When Windows Antivirus Pro is installed it is configured to run every time Windows starts. Once running it will automatically scan your computer and then list a variety of infections that you cannot attempt to remove until you purchase the program. This program also acts as ransomware because while it is running it will state that almost any program you try to execute is an infection and not allow you to run it. This makes it hard to run any legitimate anti-malware programs until you end the Windows Antivirus Pro processes or purchase it. While Windows Antivirus Pro is running you will also see numerous security alerts and hijacks appear while using your computer.
A summary of the types of alerts you will see are:. The following message will be shown when you try to run almost any application: Warning! Running of application is impossible. The file C: Windows Notepad.exe is infected.
Please activate your antivirus program. Security alerts, or Infiltration alerts, falsely stating that your computer is under attack or that a security risk has been found. Examples of messages you will see are: Warning: Infection is Detected Windows has found spyware infection on your computer! Click here to update your Windows antivirus software Security Warning There are critical system files on your computer that were modified by malicious program. It will cause unstable work of your system and permanent data loss. Click here to undo performed modifications and remove malicious software (Highly recommended). Security Warning Your computer continues to be infected with harmful viruses.
In order to prevent permanent loss of your information and credit card data theft please activate your antivirus software. Click here to enable protection. Security Warning Malicious programs that may steal your private information and prevent your system from working properly are detected on your computer. Click here to clean your PC immediately. A window that impersonates the Windows Security Center that promotes Windows Antivirus Pro.
While using Internet Explorer, you will randomly be shown an alert stating that the site you are browsing has attacked your computer. A window that state that your Windows processes are crashing even whey are are not. As you can see, Windows Antivirus Pro was designed to trick you into thinking your computer is under attack or infected when in reality the program itself is the infection. Instead of purchasing this program, please use the guide below to remove this program and any related malware for free. This guide contains advanced information, but has been written in such a way so that anyone can follow it.
Please ensure your data is backed up before proceeding. If you are uncomfortable making changes to your computer or following these steps, do not worry! Instead you can get free one-on-one help by asking in the. Print out these instructions as we may need to close every window that is open later in the fix.
This application will disable the ability to use your Windows Task Manager. To fix this, please download the following file to your desktop. Once the file is downloaded, double-click on it and select Yes when it asks if you want to merge the data into your Registry. Once that is completed you should be able to use the Windows Task Manager. Now we need to end the two processes associated with Windows Antivirus Pro as they do not allow you to run any applications that we will need to remove this program. To do this we need to launch the Windows Task Manager by right-clicking on the time in the Windows task bar and then selecting Task Manager. The menu showing the Task Manager option is shown below.
At this point you should press the Yes button in order to kill the process. After you have ended the Windows Antivirus Pro.exe process, scroll through the list of processes until you find the svchast.exe process. Then end this process as well by clicking on the End Process button and confirming that you want to end it. Please note that in Windows there is a legitimate program called svchost.exe, so please be careful to only end the process that is spelled svchast.exe. Now that the two Windows Antivirus Pro processes are terminated, you can use your programs again.
You should now download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, or MBAM, from the following location and save it to your desktop: (Download page will open in a new window). Once downloaded, close all programs and Windows on your computer, including this one. Double-click on the icon on your desktop named mb3-setup-1878.1878-3.0.6.1469.exe. This will start the installation of MBAM onto your computer.
When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings and when the program has finished installing, make sure you leave both the Update Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes Anti-Malware checked. Then click on the Finish button. If MalwareBytes' prompts you to reboot, please do not do so.
MBAM will now automatically start and you will see a message stating that you should update the program before performing a scan. As MBAM will automatically update itself after the install, you can press the OK button to close that box and you will now be at the main program as shown below. You should now click on the Remove Selected button to remove all the listed malware.
MBAM will now delete all of the files and registry keys and add them to the programs quarantine. When removing the files, MBAM may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message stating that it needs to reboot, please allow it to do so. Once your computer has rebooted, and you are logged in, please continue with the rest of the steps.
When MBAM has finished removing the malware, it will open the scan log and display it in Notepad. Review the log as desired, and then close the Notepad window. You can now exit the MBAM program. Your computer should now be free of the WindowsAntivirusPro program. If your current anti-virus solution let this infection through, you may want to consider to protect against these types of threats in the future.