Antivirus. Is it working properly? How to check.

Sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether your antivirus is working correctly. In some cases you may need to check whether your antivirus is legitimate or whether it may have bee disable by an virus or malware. If you need to check whether it is performing as expected then follow our guide below. As this is a general guide, the responses may vary between antivirus software packages and may also depend on their configuration.

1. Can you run the program? If disabled by malware then you may not be able to even open the antivirus program window.
2. Is your antivirus able to get updates. If you select the updates option in your antivirus does it successfully update the software or generate any errors? Some malware will prevent the antivirus from being able to contact the update server.

If your antivirus is performing the above steps correctly then it would suggest that your antivirus program is working correctly. However, it may be failing to detect viruses when the are downloaded or if they are on your hard drive. To check whether your antivirus is detecting viruses you can use the eicar anti-virus test file. The file is not an actual virus but should be recognised by all antivirus as a positive control. Here is how you use the eicar file to check your antivirus:

1. Either go the the www.eicar.org website and try to download the file 'eicar.com' or try to download it through our link. If your antivirus performs an on-access can on downloaded files it will quarantine or delete this file before you can even access it. If this occurs this means your on access scan is working correctly (and efficiently).
2. Other antivirus will require you to try and open it before it scans. In this case double-click the downloaded file. If it opens without any intervention or notificaitons that it thinks you have a virus, then your 'on-access' scan is not working. You can progress to the following steps too to check if your hard drive scan is working.
3. Go to your antivirus scan window and ask for a full drive scan and allow your computer to work away. If it fails to tell you you have a virus then it would seem that your antivirus is not working as it cannot detect the 'positive control' virus.

It is important to remember that if your antivirus detects the 'EICAR test file' then it does not mean you have a computer virus - it is just a positive control and can do your computer no harm.d.

Cathal O'Brien PhD is a qualified computer repair technician and runs a computer repair business in Dublin Ireland.