Running a pre-defined scan

avast! antivirus 6.0 comes with a number of pre-defined scans installed by default.

Quick scan – this will just perform a quick scan of your computer’s system volume (usually the C:\ drive on your computer). By default, only files with “dangerous” extensions are scanned, e.g. files with extensions such as “exe”, “com”, “bat” etc. Only those parts of the file at the beginning and at the end, where infections are normally found, are tested.

Full System Scan – This performs a more detailed scan of all your computer’s hard disks and by default, all files are scanned according to their content, in other words, avast! looks inside every file to determine what type of file it is and whether it should be scanned. The whole file is tested, not just those parts of the file at the beginning or at the end where infections are normally found.

Removable Media Scan – this will scan any removable media that is attached to your computer e.g. USB flash drives, external hard drives etc. It will scan the media to detect potential “auto-run” programs that may try to launch when the device is connected.

Select folder to scan – this option enables you to scan just a specific folder or multiple folders.

To run one of the pre-defined scans now, just click “Start”.

Alternatively, you can schedule the scan to be run on a regular basis, or just once at a later time and date – see the “Scheduling” page in the section “Scan settings”.

The other “Settings” screens can also be used to further customize the scans, or by clicking on “Create custom scan” you can create a new scan with all the required settings.

Running a pre-defined scan