Antivirus Program

Anti-Virus Program

It is used for detecting or removing a computer virus. This program looks for suspicious activity, such as attempts to intercept a BIOS or other low-level call, unnecessary disk access, and attempts to format or delete files. Sometimes the anti-virus program detects a pattern characteristic of a particular virus. Some anti-virus programs are TSR (terminate-and-stay-resident) programs, which monitor computer activity constantly, looking for indications of a virus. In some cases, these types of programs can be extremely annoying and very processor intensive. So users have been known to remove an anti-virus TSR program from memory out of frustration. Other anti-virus programs are intended to be run periodically. When they are run, the

Programs look for the tell-tale signs (known as signatures) of particular viruses and these programs are minimally disruptive. That is their effectiveness is directly proportional to the frequency with which they are used. Antivirus programs must be updated regularly because the coding for computer viruses is constantly changing. Also it is very important to test every new release of anti-virus programs thoroughly. Some antivirus programs uses a large amount of working memory.