Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

anti virus programs

Mar 23, 2004 1:11PM PST

was wondering...i have housecall...stinger...adaware 6..cwshredder for virus and spyware..why is it that stinger only says i have 42000 files cleaned and adaware6 says it scanned 30,000 and housecall only 13000 files?...its confusing...they work well for me but was curious..i have win 98 se
karl

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Re:anti virus programs
Mar 23, 2004 11:47PM PST

Karl,

Each one of the tools you have mentioned does something a little different.

The "Stinger" tool looks for a limited number of viruses and scans for thoses viruses in the places they might reside. In addition, there are different "Preferences" which allow you to change the number of files scanned from "processes only", to Boot sector files, etc.

I believe there are also preference settings for the Housecall online scanner. You can adjust the type of files to be scanned. Most antivirus programs have this option.

The Ad-Aware program is a spyware/adware scanner and scans something entirely different from the Stinger and Housecall tools. Spyware resides in different places and therefore the tool must check different things.

Each one of the tools you have mentioned scans different things on the computer and therefore, it's not unusual to find that there are different numbers for files scanned. Remember, on some of these tools, you can change the preferences to scan "All Files", "Programs only", etc .

Hope this helps.

Grif

- Collapse -
Re:Re:anti virus programs
Mar 24, 2004 1:12AM PST

grif thank you..you very helpful and informative
karl

- Collapse -
(NT) Karl, Glad It Helped & Keep Up The Safe Computing !
Mar 24, 2004 10:36AM PST

.