How Does My Anti Virus Software Remove A Virus?

The anti virus software program on your computer scans files to track and remove viruses from your system, along with other malware that may be infecting it. As a rule, two different methods are used in accomplishing this:
● using a virus dictionary, the software examines your files to detect known viruses, or
● focusing on suspicious behavior related to any program as this might indicate that an infection is present.

Virus Dictionary Approach

In this case, when a piece of code from a file matches a virus listed in the dictionary, the anti virus software will delete the file, separate it from the other programs, or remove the virus in order to repair the file. To be effective, this approach requires periodic downloading of the dictionary’s updates, which are supplied by the authors of the software. Ordinarily, this type of anti virus software scans file when they are created, opened, closed or e-mailed, and it can also be scheduled to examine every file on your hard drive periodically.

Suspicious Behavior Approach

Instead of trying to identify particular viruses, this anti virus software monitors the activity of every program in the computer system. For example, when a program attempts to create data for an executable program, this is automatically labeled as suspicious behavior, and the user is notified and asked how to proceed. As a result, it protects the system from new viruses that cannot be found in a virus dictionary. Unfortunately it may also generate a number of false positives, causing the user to ignore all of the warnings it produces. In recent years, this problem has intensified because a number of non-malicious computer programs have opted to disregard the false-positive issue while modifying other .exes. As a result, anti virus software designers seem to be phasing out this approach.

How Does My Anti Virus Software Remove A Virus?

Virus Dictionary Approach

Suspicious Behavior Approach

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