sharing my computer

[ginet]

i have set up user accounts for my famliy giving each
user their own desktop, documents etc do i need to run
the virus scan in each users account or will running the
scan from one cover all

 

[Juan]

Greetings:

The virus scan will cover all users folders, just make sure you have it
configured to scan everything; drives, subfolders, programs, etc.


----------------Ooriginal Message------------------

 

[Guest]

This is a geuss depending on what harddrive/folder are
readable will be recognized by the software. Files that
arn't readable by different users will not be scanned.

A suggestion do everything from the administrators account
that is a system process. The administrators account
should have access to everything.

 

[cquirke (MVP Win9x)]

i have set up user accounts for my famliy giving each
user their own desktop, documents etc do i need to run
the virus scan in each users account or will running the
scan from one cover all

That's a good question. Factors that affect the answer:
- access to registry required to clean up malware references
- NTFS-level per-user permission blocks

For traditional malware ("viruses", "worms" etc.) I'd want to scan
formally, i.e. without running Windows. In that context, user
accounts simply don't apply, but per-user registry issues and NTFS are
very likely to be problems.

For commercial malware (as managed by Spybot, Ad-Aware etc.) it has
been noted that repeating the scans from each user's account is best
(and may be required) practice. You can forsee that any commercial
malware that runs on startup and "infects" other user accounts from
the one it is running in, is going to be a Challenge to fix.

http://cquirke.mvps.org/whatmos.htm applies to these scenarios.

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