Hello,

A friend of me uses ClamWin on a pc which is running under Windows Vista. ClamWin seems well working.

But Windows Vista, in security alarms my friend periodically. It says that there are no viruses protection on computer.

Is it a problem with Vista which is not able to recognize ClamWin or a limitation of ClamWin. release of ClamWin is the latest.

Thanks for your help

Windows XP and Vista will both let the user know the status of antivirus and firewall security software installed if the AV/firewall vendor has provided the information to Microsoft to enter into its database. ClamWin has not provided the information because it does not yet have a resident file scanner; therefore, Windows wouldn't see it working anyway. I understand the information may be provided in the future when a resident version of ClamWin is released. Some small AV companies don't provide the information to MS--they would rather spend the time working on their product.

As long as the ClamWin icon is in your system tray, ClamWin is working. As I said, however, it is not resident--it only scans files on demand when you tell it to do so. So if you surft the Web a lot or engage in "risky" online bahavior (porn/crack sites), you should also use a resident scanner as your primary scanner and use ClamWin as a "backup." If you don't, you are probably safe with firewall, ClamWin, and antispyware and frequent scans.

Regards,

with XP you can specify how the system alerts you about your protection and tell it not to nag you about virus protection.

my sister has vista (I don't) and when you try to install something that writes to 'protected' folders or areas of the registry it pops up a warning "this program requires your permission to continue". it nags three times with three different cautions when you install software. that is great as it means that you will not un-intentionally be tricked it to running a trojan - which is exactly what a scan on access ("memory resident") virus scanner should protect you from. Of course some users (e.g. children) will say yes to install a trojan anyway as it will be disguised as the lastest 'must have' fun game. To protect such users from themselves you should have a buy a scan on access virus scanner - or do the obvious thing and only give them a limited XP account so that they cannot install malware.

Some heavy users wont want a memory resident virus scanner as it can slow down their systems. When i was a software engineer working at a bank it had a memory resident virus scanner. When I compiled the internet banking system my tools would create thousands of new files - the virus scanner would scan them all very time. The build system then took twice as long with scan on access turned on than with out it. So we perferred to turn it off, and be careful what installers we ran - to manually scan those - which you can do with ClamAV.

The upshot is - tell Vista/XP not to nag, install ClamAV and use it, and make 'untrusted' users login using a limited account, and you can sleep at night.

As I mentioned Vista appears to give you plenty of warnings when software is trying to write to special folders and areas of the registry. XP does not. this means that it is not a good idea to login to XP as an administrator all of the time in case you stumble upon a site that has a 'zero day' attack - that is to say it tricks your browser into downloading and installing a Trojan for which their is no known antivirus signature. to this end i use my XP machines with a Limited Account. if i want to install something I can right click, scan with ClamWin, then shift+right click 'run as' and run the program as an administrator user - else switch users too an admin uses just to install a program. running as a limited user FireFox and Thunderbird will nag that they are unable to install their automatic updates - which is good as it means that they cannot be tricked into installing Trojans. when they nag I just shift+right click 'run as' the administrator account, tell them to check for updates, install, then restart them as normal under my limited account.

the catch comes with my Mom's XP machine. right clicking and remembering the administrators password to her machine is a bit too much. Apps that want an upgrade can nag until I next visit. the tricky one is her scanner software. it is old and badly written - by default it scans into c:\program files\ which XP wont let a limited users' account write to folders under their. so it just silently crashes running under her limited account. for that one i used CPAU to create a shortcut that runs the program under an administrator account. jobs a good 'un. when vista's SP1 comes out I might treat her to an upgrade...

Solution is simple. ( On Vista. )

1. Disable UAC. ( User Account Control )
2. Disable Security Centre.

If you are not confident in doing these, you should really be using a resident agent anti-virus program, and not a "scan only" anti-virus.
I use clamwin, as I have never encountered a virus unexpectedly, and can always determine whether a specific "file" may be unsafe, so I use clamwin to check.

Vista adds a layer of security for naive people, and for people who don't use sandbox programs.