How often to scan?

onejontwo

With thanks to you techie guys and a lot of help from this forum I've saved money on parts (ie a new hard drive), installed the best anti-virus software, cleaned up my PC and it now runs like a dream. The next thing I would ask is how often should I scan? As at the moment I'm paranoid about viruses, due to the past history and problems I've had I never want to go through that again!
At present I'm running
Kaspersky internet suite 2009 (quick scan daily, full scan weekly)
Malwarebytes (full scan weekly)
Superantispyware (full scan weekly)
Spybot (full scan weekly)

Also I do a weekly run with ccleaner and Glary utilities.
Running XP on a 7 year old machine.

Is this about right or am I going over the top!!!

Jaffa.

Why do you have Malwarebytes, Superantispyware and Spybot when you have Kaspersky internet suite 2009? Kaspersky is all you need - the rest is, well just gonna fight over the same virus if ones found.

As for the scan once a week is fine (it would be used to scan for say rootkits) as you have real time protection which always scans accessed files and files coming onto the computer.

onejontwo

The reason I have all this is in the past I had Mc afee (I know I know!!) and viruses got through and Mc afee couldn't get rid of it and I was stumped as the virus wouldn't let me access the internet to download another antivirus. So basically I had to reinstall XP and lost all sorts of stuff (my fault I know) so now it's belt AND braces just in case Kaspersky throws a wobbler!

Jaffa.

onejontwo wrote: »

(I know I know!!)

Nah Kaspersky really good

John_Gray

Nothing is perfect...

If the OP doesn't mind doing additional scans and 99% (or more) of the time getting nothing detected, then surely that's fine. He will be pleased if something ever gets found that Kaspersky may have missed!

But the real-time scanner is the most vital tool - it traps malware before it has a chance to do anything.

onejontwo

John_Gray wrote: »

Nothing is perfect...

If the OP doesn't mind doing additional scans and 99% (or more) of the time getting nothing detected, then surely that's fine. He will be pleased if something ever gets found that Kaspersky may have missed!

But the real-time scanner is the most vital tool - it traps malware before it has a chance to do anything.

Out of curiosity, how often do you scan?

aliEnRIK

Malwarebytes definitely finds things that kaspersky has missed at times

Id suggest scanning alternating weekly

Marty_J

I scan once every couple of months.

That's probably over-kill though.

eamon

Not wanting to disagree with the other posters esp Rik. Your scanning frequency should be determined by the number of different users on your machine and also by the type of sites/downloads visited/undertaken. If you are or others visit !!!!!! and or gambling sites then scan once per week, the same for downloads especially P2P sites. If you use IE then ditch that for Firefox or other browser that will by itself make your surfing/internet experience safer. You can also make use of what you have been taught by Rik and others thus when deleting redundant software do it correctly and follow up with CCleaner to tidy up your registry files.

aliEnRIK

Marty_J wrote: »

I scan once every couple of months.

That's probably over-kill though.

Yes,......YOU shouldnt need to scan at all