If I remove the ClamTray from startup (HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Run), exactly what functionality will I lose?

I suspect the scheduler won't work, but as far as starting a manual/context-menu scan, I will still get the same reliability, right? (Assuming I also run the update manually.)

Thanks.

you lose:
1. Tray notifications
2. scheduled database updates and scheduled scans

If you are doing updates manually there is no harm in disabling clamtray.exe, but I would only recomend that to users who really know what they do

By updating manually, I meant openning the ClamScan GUI adn selecting hitting Update Virus Database from one of the pulldowns.

And I asked because I wanted to use ClamAV as a supplement to another AV (as yet undecided); I'd be doing some combination of a lot of scheduled ClamScan (with Windows Scheduler, and scheduling an update sometime before it), one weekly scan with the other AV, and resident protection with the other AV. Yes, I know I'm paranoid, but you'd be too if you knew the users (and the number of times I was forced to reformat the machine).
Anyways, much thanks.

I had the same question. This is perfectly reasonable, and I wish clamwin would make this an option.
Why is it everyone wants to be the total-solution for your desktop and expect to own it?
Thanks for asking the question.

And while I'm at it, I'm looking for CLI options so I can schedule the clamwin updates and scans.
How many schedules need to be written and learned by users?

Me too. I guess I don't *REALLY* mind a background process that just takes care of scheduling, but isn't the Windows task scheduler already running? I see in my services list that it is. Maybe it would be nice for ClamWin to include an interface in its options to create scheduled tasks in the Windows task scheduler and allow deactivation of the TSR that sits in the system tray. After all, WHY IN THE WORLD does that service need to just sit there and take up 18MB of my memory?!? That's a bit much, isn't it? I see some other schedulers for other apps (hmm, time to investigate them too) that only are taking 1MB.

FWIW, I found this script in another thread here someone created for doing their own database update. It needs some error checking, but it's a start. You can then schedule this in the Windows task scheduler.... and I think it'll be easy enough to dig up the command-line stuff for doing a scan too. The other nice thing would be to make it easier for users to understand how to permanently stop the ClamWin service from starting every time at logon... I have to go to SpyBot S&D to let it figure it out for me. (OK, here it is: Start-->Run-->msconfig-->Startup-->uncheck "ClamTray")

Ah, what the heck... I went ahead and added on to the script I found - mostly just some error checking. Have phun!


echo off

REM ### This script automates updates of ClamWin database files and can be
REM ### used to manually schedule updates with Windows Task Scheduler or
REM ### just as a click-and-go icon on your desktop so that you can disable
REM ### the ClamTray service. Here is how to do that:
REM ### Start-->Run-->msconfig-->Startup-->uncheck "ClamTray"
REM ###
REM ### Note that in the event of any problems, the command window where this
REM ### is running will be left open with the error. Not sure if/how that'll
REM ### work when run by Windows Task Scheduler, since I'm writing this on the
REM ### fly... could use some more robust error reporting mechanism, but that's
REM ### for later I guess.
REM ###
REM ### This script is released under GNU GPL
REM ### See: https://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html

echo.
echo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo ---- UPDATING CLAM ANTIVIRUS DATABASES ----
echo ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
echo.
set DONTEXIT=0
chdir %TEMP%

REM ### download main database update
REM ###
:main_download
wget https://database.clamav.net/main.cvd
if not errorlevel 1 goto move_main_database
set DONTEXIT=1
echo.
echo.
echo ERROR!
echo Sorry, Clam main database update could not be downloaded
echo.
echo.
goto daily_download

REM ### move main database update into correct place
REM ###
:move_main_database
move main.cvd "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\.clamwin\db"
if not errorlevel 1 goto daily_download
set DONTEXIT=1
echo.
echo.
echo ERROR!
echo Sorry, Clam main database file could not be moved into place
echo.
echo.
goto daily_download

REM ### download daily database update
REM ###
:daily_download
wget https://database.clamav.net/daily.cvd
if not errorlevel 1 goto move_daily_database
set DONTEXIT=1
echo.
echo.
echo ERROR!
echo Sorry, Clam daily database update could not be downloaded
echo.
echo.
goto end

REM ### move daily database update into correct place
REM ###
:move_daily_database
move daily.cvd "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\.clamwin\db"
if not errorlevel 1 goto end
set DONTEXIT=1
echo.
echo.
echo ERROR!
echo Sorry, Clam daily database file could not be moved into place
echo.
echo.
goto end

REM ### if finished successfully, just exit quietly
REM ### otherwise, just keep window open until user
REM ### has a chance to see the error
REM ###
:end
if %DONTEXIT% == 0 exit
echo.
pause
exit

So now I am looking for what command to specify for a manual scan. Doing a clamscan --help on the command line is only partially useful -- it does NOT indiate what default behavior is. For instance, there is both a --no-archive switch as well as several --tar[=FULLPATH] switches... so what is default behavior? Does it scan archives? Is it recursive? What does it use as its temp directory? What about any exclusions?

It'd be nice if there were somewhere to see the command as built by the ClamWin GUI so we could just copy that. I don't necessarily want to fiddle around with the REGEXP to duplicate the default exclusions that come in the ClamWin GUI, etc.

Anyone know where to look or have a fairly comprehensive set of switches on hand?

TIA!

BTW, folks, the script above uses wget, and, of course, there are lots of ways to get wget working in a Windows command-line environment, but my favorite is here:

https://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

you can use directly freshclam with --datadir=_path_where_clamwin_has_db