How to Scan your Computer for Viruses
Comodo Antivirus allows you to quickly run on-demand scan of any area or item on your computer.
To start a manual scan of your computer or specific location
- Open the 'Run a Scan' dialog by selecting 'Scan Now' from the summary screen. The interface can also be opened by clicking the 'Antivirus' tab followed by 'Run A Scan'.
Either method will open the 'Run a Scan' dialog:
- You now have two broad options:
- Run a predefined scan profile. 'My Computer' will scan your entire system while 'Critical Areas' is a targeted scan of very important files and folders.
Select the profile you want then just click the 'Scan' button to run a scan of a predefined area
OR - Create then run a new scan profile. As the name suggests, this allows you to create a custom scan of precise areas of your system (drives. folders etc). See custom scan if you would like to know more about this option.
After clicking the scan button, Comodo Antivirus will first check for database updates. If they are available, they will be downloaded and installed before the scan runs.
Scanning will commence immediately after any updates are applied.
The progress dialog shows the following items: profile name, the scanned location, the start time and duration of the scan, the total number of objects scanned and the number of threats found.
On completion of scanning, the scan results screen will list the names and risk levels of all the threats found.
Note the 'All?' check-box in the top left corner is enabled, meaning your choice of 'Clean' or 'Ignore' will apply to all listed items.
Click the 'Clean' button to disinfect selected threats or move them to Quarantined Items.
Clicking 'Ignore' button allows you to ignore file(s) once, report the file(s) to Comodo as a false positive or create an exclusion for this file(s). If required, you can save the scan results as a text file by clicking the 'Save Results' link.
For more details on quarantined applications, refer to Antivirus Tasks > Quarantined Items
For more details on ignore options, refer to Ignore an application/file
To create a custom scan profile
- Click 'Create New Scan' in the 'Run a Scan' interface.
- Type a name for the scan profile to be created in the 'Name' box.
- Click 'Add'.
- Select the locations to be scanned when the newly created scan profile is selected.
- Select the locations from the left column, drag and drop to the right column or select the locations and click right arrow to move selected folders to right column.
- Click 'Apply'.
To run an instant scan on a particular item
You can instantly virus scan virtually any file, folder, photo, application or hard-drive by simply dragging the item into the scan box on the summary screen or onto the Comodo icon on the dock.
