Can someone tell me how to delete viruses found by ClamWin

It is probably just notifying you about the viruses. You have to set it do delete it. But, i doesn't just delete the virus, it deletes the whole file.

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Here is Step-By-Step:

1)Open Clamwin

2)Click tools on top

3)Click preferences

4)Where it says in blue letters "Infected files" click "Remove (use carfully)".

NOTICE:YOU PROBABLY SHOULD USE IT CARFULLY BECUASE IT MIGHT DELETE A WINDOWS FILE.

Regards, GuY1

Hello,

Before deleting I would recommend to upload the suspect files to https://www.virustotal.com/ (from the same site you have the possibility to download and install a file uploader; so you will just have to locate the suspect file->right click and choose option 'Send to Virus Total'). This will help you to make a double check and avoid to delete files that could finally reveal to be false positive (at least this is what I do constantly each time Clamwin reports an infection is found on my machine, especially if this is located in system folders).

If false positive are likely to be found please notify Clam team by using the form @ https://cgi.clamav.net/sendvirus.cgi and ticking appropriate cases; thus you will help Clam to improve its detection performance.

Hope this helps,
Antonio

Thanks-

Please explain to me what false positives are.

Robin

Hello Robin,

False positives are files which are spotted as malware by an AV during a scan but are really clean (non infected). This may happen for incorrect virus signature in AV database (roughly saying, a wrong match in the Virus ID database of a given AV) or by incorrect results of heuristic check (this is another way in which AV's try to identify malware by matching specific characteristics, this gives quicker results in terms of detection in spite of lesser accuracy).

Note that more or less all AV's can fall into false positives: I personally experienced a detection of a false positive by the AV i had installed at the time (was AVG free 7.5), therefore before deleting the file I made a check with VirusTotal and the finally the suspect file appeared to be legitimate.

Then my recommendation is always to have a 'second opinion' before deleting a file from your computer, especially if the file is located in system folders (namely the Windows , System32 , Documents and Settings folders), otherwise you'll risk malfunctions in some applications (or in the OS itself).
If you have many files that ClamWin detected as malware you may think to try an on line virus scanner (see the Anti Malware Resource page on Clamwin's site and choose) so you can doublecheck if ClamWin findings correspond to result of the online scan (this is a check I do periodically on my machines).
Furthermore you may choose to have ONE resident AV (i.e. AV with real time protection) installed on your computer; there are many options to choose which are free for personal use. The good is that it will not conflict with ClamWin since this is (by now) only an on demand scanner, so you can use alternatively both of them for your scans.


Hope this helps,
Antonio