HOW TO USE MCAFEE VIRUSSCAN

Part 1: Scanning your hard drive
Part 2: Scanning email attachments
Part 3: Scanning a floppy disk

The following are on how to use McAfee VirusScan to scan your hard drive, email attachments and floppy disks. Now that we are using Microsoft Outlook to read email, it’s very important that we get in the habit of scanning for viruses. The latest viruses and "worms" use Outlook to infiltrate your Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, Access, etc) and/or your entire hard drive. It’s very important to scan email attachments—even if you know the person who sent the attachment to you. It’s also very important to scan floppy disks—especially disks you’ve received from another person, or disks you bring from home….if you have a young one at home who uses disks in a school or university computer lab, your chances of having a virus on your home PC are, unfortunately, great.

Part 1: Scanning your hard drive.

Shut down all programs you have running. Also, turn off your screen saver. Go to the start button, click run. A dialog box will popup, and will probably have the last thing run on your PC. Type the following command—with the quotes:

"C:\Program Files\Network Associates\McAfee VirusScan\scan32.exe"

Note, this command might already be there…if so, you do not need to type over it. Click ok.

Now you’ll see the McAfee box. Make sure the "Include subfolders" box has a check mark in it. Then click on the circle next to "All files" to put a dot in it. Click "Scan Now." It will take a several minutes to complete the scan.

Note: If virus scan detects a virus notify a Tech Team member IMMEDIATELY. Do not click on anything. There will probably be a popup message that will ask you if you want to clean off the virus. The reason a Tech Team member needs to know is that some of the viruses need to be manually cleaned and the Tech Team will have to check other computers for the virus.
 
 

Part 2: Scanning email attachments.

It’s very important to scan email attachments, even if it’s from someone you know and trust. Lots of folks don’t update their virus software and, therefore, cannot detect the latest viruses and worms. This allows the sender to inadvertently pass viruses and worms along to you and everyone else they email.

First, do not open the attachment! Save the attachment to your Temp directory on your hard drive.

Go to start, click run, type in the McAfee path (it’s the same as the one listed on the "scanning your entire hard drive" page).

In the McAfee "Scan in" line, you’ll see C:\ --after the C:\ type Temp just as you see in the illustration above. Then click scan now. If you detect a virus, follow the instructions on the "scanning your entire hard drive" page. Also, notify the person who sent the email message and tell them they have a virus and need to take necessary steps in cleaning their system.
 
 

Part 3: Scanning a floppy disk.

Make sure your floppy disk is in the drive—NOTE: THIS IS NOT TO BE USED ON CD’S. DO NOT OPEN OR RUN THE FILES ON THE DISK UNTIL YOU’VE SCANNED THEM.

Go to start, run and type in the McAfee path—the same path as "scanning your entire hard drive."

Change the C:\ to A:\ and click scan now.

If you detect a virus, follow the instructions on "scanning your entire hard drive." Do not open or run the files until you are absolutely positive that they are clean.

If you do detect a virus on a disk….DO NOT GIVE THE DISK BACK TO THE PERSON! Either destroy it and throw it in the trash or give the disk to a Tech Team member to destroy—if the person you give the disk to is not at their desk, please put a note on the disk saying what’s wrong with it and from whom you received the disk.
 
 
 
 
 

AM 05/10/2000

This page has been visited times since 04/05/05

This page is maintained by John Milazzo jamilazz@mail.smu.edu
For questions about the content of this page, please contact Andy Maupin amaupin@mail.smu.edu
Last updated 05/17/2000