This may sound as a simple question but I have noticed that when I run HitmanPro Alert it only shows the C: drive being scanned!
I also have Malwarebytes Pro so my question is when I run a scan with either HitmanPro Alert or Malwarebytes Pro do they scan all drives (4x) in the pc or just the c: drive?
It is my impression that HitmanPro.Alert appears to be only concerned with programs and utilities regardless of location. The scanning? I have to test that idea, will report back if I find out anything.
"Do most anti-virus/malware apps scan all drives or just C: " Most if not all AV AM AS programs allow users to choose which partitions to monitor and on-demand scan. I think many leave the hidden system partitions just that, hidden from user choices.
Thanks, Compumind for the link to Malwarebytes video which I found very useful on how to schedule all drives to be scanned with Malwarebytes Premium.
Thanks, RolandJS it looks as HitmanPro Alert just scans the C: drive when it does a Default or Quick scan. When integrated with Windows Explorer it will scan folder/files but NOT drives!
HitmanPro Default scan (Recommended)
HitmanPro does not show in Windows Explorer when trying to scan any drive so, I assume it can only scan folders on any drive when used with Windows Explorer.
When pointing to a drive HitmanPro does not appear in the Windows Explorer shell
When pointing to a folder HitmanPro does appear in the Windows Explorer shell
Which proves that it only scans drive C:
Be very observant of hitmanpro.alert's scan discoveries! Do not set to automatically discover and delete, rather, set to automatically ignore -- then line by line you choose which discoveries to change from ignore to delete before you "tell" it to delete the chosens. There is no quarantine bucket in the version I have.
Hitmanpro.alert can be very like combofix, rkill, adw[something], and other utilities -- running automatically amok can result in undesirable and sometimes OS-dire consequences.
Be aware, Full drive scans with Malwarebytes will take a long time and are totally unnecessary.
Malwarebytes is not designed to function like normal AV scanners and uses a new kind of scan engine that relies mostly on heuristics detection techniques rather than traditional threat signatures. Malwarebytes is also designed to look in all the locations where malware is known to install itself/hide, so a full or custom scan shouldn't be necessary, especially on any sort of frequent basis (like daily), especially since the default Threat Scan/Quick Scan checks all loading points/startup locations, the registry, all running processes and threads in memory, along with all system folders, program folders and data folders as well as any installed browsers, caches and temp locations. This also means that if a threat were active from a non-standard location, because Malwarebytes checks all threads and processes in memory, it should still be detected. The only threat it *might* miss would be a dormant/inactive threat that is not actively running/installed on a secondary drive, however if the threat were executed then Malwarebytes should detect it. Additionally, whenever a new location is discovered to be used by malware the Malwarebytes Research team adds that location dynamically to the outgoing database updates so the locations that are checked by the default Threat/Quick Scan in Malwarebytes can be changed on the fly by Research without requiring any engine or program version updates/upgrades.
If you need a flat file scanner to check archived data/drives, I would recommend using one of the many available free AV scanners such as Kaspersky's Virus Removal Tool, ESET's Free Virus Scan, or even the built in Windows Defender that ships with Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10. Links to the first two scanners I mentioned can be found below:
Free Virus Removal Tool | Free Virus Scanner and Cleaner | Kaspersky
Free Virus Scan | Online Virus Scan from ESET | ESET
Also keep in mind,
Malwarebytes does not target script files during a scan.. That means MB will not target; JS, HTML, VBS, .CLASS, SWF, BAT, CMD, PDF, PHP, etc.
It also does not target documents such as; PDF, DOC, DOCx, XLS, XLSx, PPT, PPS, ODF, etc.
It also does not target media files; MP3, WMV, JPG, GIF, etc.
Malwarebytes will detect files like these on execution-only. IF you have the PAID version.
Hi folks
WD these days on latest version of Windows is More than enough -- you really don't need on domestic (not enterprise) computers anything more than that --you can scan whatever you like and its frequently updated so always current and working.
All those other A/V products are OLD solutions that are no longer valid for latest versions of Windows. SAVE your money !!! buy an SSD instead.
The Real time protection built in with Windows defender and the "Intelligence" updates are more than good enough unless you are one of those using warez and dubious torrent sites --if you use those things you deserve what you get anyway.
Learn how to avoid SCAMS and fake web sites and that will save you far more than any bit of passed its sell by date A/V software including things like MB etc etc.
For those TRUELY PARANOID about Windows security and still want to use the Internet --Learn Linux and run Windows as a Virtual Machine --then any time it gets infected just fire up another VM !!!!!
These days there's so much JUNK and HYPERBOLE spoken in the computer security industry regarding (and I mean here) domestic computers --not enterprise / work lans which have other issues.
What was the last major threat that got installed on a lot of HOME computers -- C'mon Malwarebyte users --tell me !!!!. Of course some are around (that's why WD gets updated) but what was the last major infection to hit HOME users or even seen as a threat that WD missed.
Cheers
jimbo
Most of the malware infections happen because most of the home users resort to piracy and try to install cracked apps and games which require disabling the security solution first, which defeats the purpose of an Anti-Virus.
Quote
