Saturday, January 15, 2022 – Check to see if your PC’s antivirus is working – Disabling the ads on your Windows 10 Lock Screen

If you have a Windows PC it probably has a third-party antivirus app installed on it. But even if it doesn’t it should still be protected by Windows’ native Microsoft Defender app.

But guess what? Just because your PC has an antivirus app installed on it that doesn’t mean it’s actually working to detect and prevent viral infections.

There are times when a PC’s installed antivirus engine will get turned off or even completely disabled, either by the user, by another software program or even by a really nasty virus.

Truth be told, there’s really no way to know whether your PC’s antivirus is actively protecting the machine unless you test it.

Of course you could always test it visiting a website that’s known to be infected with a virus, but that’s an extremely dangerous method, for obvious reasons.

Luckily, there’s a very simple (and completely safe) way to test your antivirus app to see if it’s actually enabled and actively checking for malware.

The European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research (EICAR) has developed a test virus to test your antivirus program.

As explained by WikiPedia, this test virus consists of a simple text file that’s written to mimic a real virus, but the file itself is completely safe and malware-free.

You can verify that yourself via this Google search. Simply visit the linked pages at McAfee, TrendMicro, Kaspersky, F-Secure and other major antivirus vendors to read their description of the file and how it works.

Using the EICAR test file to check the active status of your antivirus app is easy…

1 – Visit this page on the EICAR website.

2 – Click each of the download links in the box on the right-hand side of the page to see if the download is blocked by your antivirus program.

That’s all there is to it. If your antivirus program blocks the downloads and/or flags the download page as being infected with malware you’ll know your antivirus is currently enabled and actively checking for malware.

If the files download to your PC just like any other download, try opening the file. Some antivirus engines will allow the files to download but then block them from opening.

If the downloaded file is blocked from opening you’ll know your antivirus is currently enabled and actively checking for malware.

If the file opens it should print the following message on the screen:

“EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!”

At this point you can try running a regular antivirus scan with your antivirus app. If it detects the EICAR file as a virus you’ll know the app is enabled and checking for malware during scans.

If the EICAR file is never flagged as containing a virus at all you’ll know there’s a problem with your antivirus program and you’ll need to figure out why it isn’t working as it should.

And now, one last point…

Even though your antivirus app should detect the EICAR file as a virus it won’t be able to ‘clean’ it because there’s no actual virus to clean. Simply delete the file and you’re done.

Do you have precious photos and/or other irreplaceable files that you’d like to recover from a non-working computer?

Chances are I’ll be able to recover them for you, even if the machine won’t turn on or start up correctly.

Click here for more info.