Wow! That was a really quick reply! Thanks everybody!
I have previewed it, & saw basically a black screen with a blue box in the lower left corner & a couple of bubbles. I have not run a full scan that way yet. I already have my Avast set to run a thorough full system scan every night. That might be too often, given the great real-time shields are always working. If I initialize the screen saver scan, would Avast then be running two big scans at the same time tonight? (Of course my screen saver will come on a few minutes after I quit using my PC today.) Assuming I configured both the same, is there anything the screen saver scans that the full system scan does not scan?
My evening plans got cancelled, so I'll be here a little while longer.
OK, I set up the screen saver scan & set it to scan "all files" Plus under 'Scan Areas" I added...
All Harddisks
System Drive
Memory
Auto-start programs
Auto-start programs (all users)
Rootkits (full scan)
No additional media (CD, memory stick, etc) will be inserted in my PC tonight.
If I check “loop” in the screen saver settings, does Avast just keep scanning over & over again? If so, does that seem like over-kill to you if I also use the full system scan daily & the real-time shields are on constantly? I have never encountered a feature like this screen saver scanner.
Why I am grateful……
I’m a true believer in malware PREVENTION! In July 2008 I did a stupid thing by clicking on an email in my Yahoo account that contained a Trojan which opened a photo of Mount Ranier in Photoshop (my default photo viewer & editor). I was running completely updated Spybot, Ad-Aware, & AVG at that time. But none of them recognized that as malware. I had no choice but to sit & watch it tear into my PC. It was one of those “Hallmark e-card” Trojans. (The only reason I did that was because I actually was expecting an e-card from someone who I already knew used Hallmark e-cards.) I knew instantly that I had nasty malware, but had no way to stop it. Unfortunately the only place I could find where I could positively identify the thing was MS’s Malware Protection Center. It’s still listed there at
http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Backdoor%3aWin32%2fIRCFlood (photo at bottom), only they had it listed as low severity at the time & changed it to ‘severe” almost a year later. Had I any real-time shields that could detect that Trojan like my new Avast! likely does, that wouldn’t have happened. I’ve seen bad websites with rogue “Windows PC Defender” & similar fake anti-virus software blocked on at least 4 occasions since that Trojan. I am soooo grateful for real-time shields & for anti-malware! I am also VERY grateful for good people like you folks who are willing to help people like me fight the war against malware.
I’m pretty sure I understand a lot more about the screen saver scanner now, Thank you All!!
Thanks, Nesivos, for the IE8 tip too! After a brief search, I see a lot about it - XSS vulnerabilities? I will act on that ASAP!
Thanks so very much!!!