How often do you run a Virus Scan?

[Silva]

I have AVG Free Edition. That scans every Saturday night, and the thing's always clean.

With an i7 2.6 GHz processor running Windows 7 x64, so yeah, I don't even notice it scanning 'till it's done.

While running Crysis.

 

[Serioli]

I scan once every 1-3 months depending on when I remember. So far so good.

*Promptly contracts every virus known to man for tempting fate*

 

[Discord]

Daily at a preset time and manually after music, picture or file downloads. I use Norton as well if that info is useful.

 

[jultub]

Once in a blue moon.

Edit: Though I do tend to scan anything downloaded before I run it or something, and it's held up well enough so far. But I haven't done a full system scan for a year now

 

[Denamic]

Once every day, as soon as my computer considers itself idle.

I have AVG Free Edition. That scans every Saturday night, and the thing's always clean.

With an i7 2.6 GHz processor running Windows 7 x64, so yeah, I don't even notice it scanning 'till it's done.

While running Crysis.

Scanning your HDD is mostly about HDD I/O, not your other specs.
You'll scan much faster on a 2GHz P4 with an SSD than any i7 system with an HDD.

 

[Sebenko]

Occasionally. I actually had no virus protection for three years, then finally got around to it. Scanned, found one infection. So either some thing's up, or this whole virus thing is blown out of proportion.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

I've set my virus scanner to do a scan every night. It almost never picks up anything, but that's no reason not to scan it.

I also do a full system backup on an external drive every weekend.

 

[Vet2501]

My computer runs a quickscan when it's idle. It also runs a full scan automatically once a week.

 

[Dark Knifer]

Not as often as I probally should...

 

[chstens]

I scan for viruses when I susoect that I may have a virus, whenever my computer acts suspiciously, I have scanned for viruses maybe two times the past 365 days, and only one of them produced legit results.

 

[savandicus]

My version of norton does a virus scan weekly and also does an idle scan so if my computer is idle for about 5 minutes or so it'll start scanning for viruses until i come back to the computer again.

I've never found any viruses though, it blocks the occasional attack on my computer and tells me about it and quite often removes tracking cookies but thats it really.

 

[Calatar]

Once every day, as soon as my computer considers itself idle.

I have AVG Free Edition. That scans every Saturday night, and the thing's always clean.

With an i7 2.6 GHz processor running Windows 7 x64, so yeah, I don't even notice it scanning 'till it's done.

While running Crysis.

Scanning your HDD is mostly about HDD I/O, not your other specs.
You'll scan much faster on a 2GHz P4 with an SSD than any i7 system with an HDD.

I very much doubt this claim, all other factors equal.
Processor speed absolutely matters too. It's just that processor power has grown faster than HDD speed, so that tends to be the bottleneck more often than the processor. I've got a computer using 2.8GHz P4 with an HDD, and it uses 90-100% of the processor while scanning, implying that given a faster processor, it would scan more quickly. An old processor can be a bottleneck too.

I scan whenever I feel like a security check would be a good idea, currently using NOD32 or Symantec Endpoint Protection, depending on the computer.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

3am every morning with ESET Smart Security.

 

[Daipire]

Never.

Norton and I don't get along, especially after last time...

 

[Mr.Black]

I scan maybe once a month. I use Avast Home (I think AVG is a piece of shit). I don't think I've had a virus in at least two years.

 

[Skobvs]

It scans while I out, I leave my computer on with folding@home running and avast deep scanning. So I would say about once every 2 days or so.

Sounds like a lot but better to be safe then sorry.

 

[Billion Backs]

Not that often.

Then again, I've got a good firewall and use this computer for entertainment uses only, with little to no important information stored. Hell, it's not even "my" computer if we get into semantics... So, meh.

 

[Ken Sapp]

once a month? The only time something has made it onto my system in recent years is the rare times that I turn off Adblock Plus in order to view a video on one those sites that forces an ad before the video will play and forget to turn it back on before surfing to another site.
Most of the infections recently tend to come through ads on the pages in recent years, particularly the Fake AVs. Good habits are the best way to avoid an infection.

MS Security Essentials + SpybotS&D + Malwarebytes + Firefox with security enhancing addons

 

[thePyro_13]

Wednesday is virus scan and back up day. Thank you windows 7 for your scheduled goodness.

I use CA antivirus plus. I've only ever found one virus since moving to 7x64. I'm pretty careful about what I do(and I don't use Internet explorer ) so I guess common sense really is the best primary form of virus protection.