McAfee DR SOLOMON S ANTI-VIRUS 8.5 User Manual page 232

Creating and Configuring Scheduled Tasks
3. Turn on heuristic scanning. Click Advanced to open the Advanced Scan
232 Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus
NOTE: Dr Solomon's Software recommends that you choose
this option for your first scan operation, or periodically
thereafter, to ensure that your system is virus-free. You can
then limit the scope of later scan operations.
• Choose file types. Viruses cannot infect files that contain no
executable code, whether script, macro, or binary code. You can,
therefore, safely narrow the scope of your scan operations to those
files most susceptible to virus infection. To do so, click the Program
files only button.
To see or designate the file name extensions the application will
examine, click Extensions. This opens the Program File Extensions
dialog box. To learn about how to change the files listed there, see
"Adding file name extensions for scanning" on page
Settings dialog box (Figure
Figure 6-11. Advanced Scan Settings dialog box
Heuristic scanning technology enables the Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus
application to recognize new viruses based on their resemblance to
similar viruses that the module already knows. To do this, the
application looks for certain "virus-like" characteristics in the files
you've asked it to scan. The presence of a sufficient number of these
characteristics in a file leads the application to identify the file as
potentially infected with a new or previously unidentified virus.
Because the application looks simultaneously for file characteristics that
rule out the possibility of virus infection, it will rarely give you a false
indication of a virus infection. Therefore, unless you know that the file
does not contain a virus, you should treat "potential" infections with the
same caution you would confirmed infections.
The Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus application starts out without any heuristic
scan options active. To activate heuristic scanning, follow these substeps:
6-11).
313.