Hi
probably a stupid question to ask here but there a lot of on demand scanners around,does clamwin find most viruses on ones PC?

Thanks
Rod

ClamWin works best as a backup scanner--you can only do a a manual scan or a scheduled scan with it. You should use a real-time scanner as your primary scanner. I recommend one of these real-time scanners: Microsoft Security Essentials, Avira AntiVir, Avast, Panda Free Cloud, or Forticlient Lite. The real-time scanners scan your computer as files are accessed or placed on your computer, thus giving you "real-time" protection that is better than the "on-demand" protection that ClamWin provides. ClamWin can only scan a file after it is already accessed or placed on your computer, and a lot of damage can be done by a virus before that happens! You should have only 1 scanner working in real-time on your computer, so they will not interfere with each other.

Another alternative is the free Clam Sentinel program that lets you scan in real-time with ClamWin, and it also uses its own scan engine on files that do not have a ClamWin signature. It is a separate project from ClamWin, but ClamWin must be installed before Clam Sentinel is installed. Clam Sentinel does not provide protection that is as complete as the scanners I named above, but it is free, open source, and its own scan engine is very fast on downloaded files.

Regards,

Again Thank You Bob you are smart!
The problem I have with some(most) of those antivirus programs is that they slow my xp system down so much surfing is not fun-I am using Threatfire as my primary now-it is not really an antivirus program but it has caught many things so far plus it is light on resources so surfing is fun,I know I am probably not fully protected but have not had a virus since using it along with clamwin portable and malwarebytes-you mentioned clam sentinal before to me but it is a pain to get it to work with the portable version so I wont use it-I really need a new PC with a ton of ram to use those other antivirus programs,so I am careful on where I go and what I download.

Rod

Threatfire is good, but I don't think they have done anything new with it for a couple of years now. PCTools (Australia) bought it from the Denver founders, and then one of the large AVs (either McAfee or Symantic--don't remember which) bought PCTools--primarily for Threatfire technology. They've got it now, and have incorporated it in their product.

I think you can run Clam Sentinel on the hard drive and keep ClamWin Portable on a USB if you change the Sentinel .ini configuration file to point to the ClamWin coniguration file on the USB. Try PathClamWin=f:\ClamWinPortable\App\DefaultData. Change F to whatever letter designates your USB. Make sure the USB is always inserted when you start up your computer. You will also have to update ClamWin Portable more often so Sentinel will always have the most frequent virus signature definitions, but the Sentinel system monitor will still give you extra protection against viruses that don't yet have a ClamWin signature yet.

Regards,

Hi Bob
yes symantic bught it and updating is a nightmare as they say at the frum there are so many servers they isolated the problems but have to check all the servers but it works and my PC is clean.

About clam sentinal-I am runnin it locally in a folder called "PortableApps" as that is where the dowbloads from portable apps install-if I want to use clam sentinal if you know-where would I install it to and what changes to an ini file would I have to make? Also does clam sentinal write to the registry?I looked at the instructions on portable freewares site and I cant understand! Any help I could understand would be nice when you have the time.

Remember I am not running it from a usb stick but from the above mentioned folder located on my C drive.there is only one ini file and it is not where you said-it is in app/appinfo/.also there is an ini in the source folder.

Thanks Bob

I do not believe that Sentinel writes to the registry. It is a simple, old-style program, originally written by Andrea Russo for Windows 98 when he discovered that the commercial AV programs were dropping support for it. Because it is so simple, it also runs quite well on newer Windows versons.

The ClamSentinel .ini configuration file is usually run from the app folder. You can use it that way or change the .ini file to run locally from the same folder where the Sentinel .exe file is located. To make it local, change the UseLocalIniFile in the Sentinel .ini configuration file to UseLocalIniFile 1=yes. I think you should put the ClamSentinel .exe and SentinelRecover.exe files in the ClamWin Portable bin folder, make the ClamSentinel .ini folder local as mentioned above, and also make the PathClamWin change to the ClamWin Portable bin folder (my previous example was PathClamWin=f:\ClamWinPortable\App\DefaultData\settings). Change it as needed. That should work for you. If it doesn't, send me a message at rwsmc at yahoo dot com.

Regards,

I will give it some thought and thanks for all the info-still I think it is too coplicated for me but I saved your last reply as a text document so I dont have to ask again!Good thing about portable apps is that they are disposable,as in I jut copy clamwin portable to my documents then if I mess up all I have to do is delete the one I messed up and move the other back!

I do this with firefox portable as I am using 3.6 which is not really safe anymore so each time I use it it gets copied to my documents then when I am done surfing out it goes and in comes the one I backed up!I love portable apps.....

Thanks Mucho Bob