You don't use any AV software or you don't update it and things don't see to be 'right'. Or you're more knowledgeable, you have new software and you know there are sites that will scan it online against 50+ AV companies to check it's OK:
https://www.virustotal.com/
http://virusscan.jotti.org/en
but both have rather small limits on the size program you can upload to scan...what to do ?
Crowd Inspect is free, it doesn't even need to be installed, you can throw it onto a thumb drive and run it from there...
What does it do ?
No it doesn't scan software prior to install so it can't eliminate all risk, what it does is scan every running process on your computer (interface looks a lot like Process Explorer, a tool many techies use to see what's actually running with more detail and info than Task Manager reveals) and then here's the trick, it scans every process for common vulnerabilities, shows every connection the process is making to the Net in detail (UDP/TCP, local port, remote port, Remote IP, current state and more) and, as long as you're connected to the Net, it runs a scan of EVERY process against 9 AV databases. Since it's totally free, everybody should have a copy lying around as a quick way to get a handle on what may be going on.
Yeah it's very techie, but even a novice can read the scan results and if they all come back false you're probably OK.
Get CrowdInspect here:
http://www.crowdstrike.com/crowdinspect/
https://www.virustotal.com/
http://virusscan.jotti.org/en
but both have rather small limits on the size program you can upload to scan...what to do ?
Crowd Inspect is free, it doesn't even need to be installed, you can throw it onto a thumb drive and run it from there...
What does it do ?
No it doesn't scan software prior to install so it can't eliminate all risk, what it does is scan every running process on your computer (interface looks a lot like Process Explorer, a tool many techies use to see what's actually running with more detail and info than Task Manager reveals) and then here's the trick, it scans every process for common vulnerabilities, shows every connection the process is making to the Net in detail (UDP/TCP, local port, remote port, Remote IP, current state and more) and, as long as you're connected to the Net, it runs a scan of EVERY process against 9 AV databases. Since it's totally free, everybody should have a copy lying around as a quick way to get a handle on what may be going on.
Yeah it's very techie, but even a novice can read the scan results and if they all come back false you're probably OK.
Get CrowdInspect here:
http://www.crowdstrike.com/crowdinspect/