Product Reviews

McAfee's VirusScan is similar to Dr Solomon's Toolkit in that it uses a special signature file to detect the presence of viruses. As new viruses are discovered 'in the wild', the signature file is updated by the company and made available as an upgrade.

For real-time scanning McAfee provides the VShield utility, which looks and feels a lot more sophisticated than Dr. Solomon's WinGuard. Accessed from the System Tray, it provides a basic status screen showing the last file scanned and a Properties button takes you into a configuration manager. There's a mass of options available that makes WinGuard look decidedly dowdy. You can decide to scan files on creation, renaming, copying and execution, and customise a list of file extensions to be included. Floppy disks can be included and the drive itself can be checked at system shutdown. The latter option earns McAfee extra brownie points as it stops infected disks being left in the PC, effectively plugging the only hole through which boot sector viruses can get in.

In the event of virus detection there are plenty of choices for determining what action to take. Access to the file can be denied, VShield can have a go at repairing it, it can be moved to a selected quarantine directory or deleted on sight. Alternatively, VShield can present the user with a list of options allowing them to decide what to do at the time. Another advantage of VShield is that, unlike WinGuard, any changes can be made on the fly and simply applied without having to re-boot the system every time.

VShield had no problems spotting boot sector-infected floppy disks, but if user prompts are selected it alerts you with a rather ugly DOS full screen. You can choose to clean the disk from here, but the warning can also be ignored. This isn't quite so good as it then grants full access to the disk contents, allowing the problem to be side-stepped. Dr Solomon's Toolkit is more insistent, forcing you to clean the disk before it can be used.

On-demand scanning is carried out using VirusScan. The main interface is similar to that of VShield and is as easy to use. An Explorer-style window allows easy selection of disks, folders or files to scan, so you don't need

I tested VirusScan using the same collection of nasties thrown at Dr Solomon's Toolkit. All 50 infected executables were identified correctly, but VirusScan handed in a disappointing performance when asked to repair them; it couldn't repair 22 of the samples, whereas Dr Solomon's managed all but 12 of them. This makes it essential to have clean backup copies of your data so that the infected files can be safely deleted and restored. Macro viruses presented no problems, with mass infections by Nuclear, Concept and Colours cleaned up successfully with all genuine macros left intact.

VirusScan also has a useful option that network administrators will appreciate. You might not want users mucking around with scan settings, so an Administrator mode can be activated with a special key press combination and all settings password-protected. However, I could find no way of enforcing the use of VirusScan, and even McAfee's network version, NetShield, doesn't integrate sufficiently well to stop users removing the software.

ScreenScan is a useful tool that puts the time you're away from your desk to a useful purpose. Whenever a screen saver is activated it will automatically start scanning selected drives. An extra tab is placed in the Display Properties window for easy access to the ScreenScan options, and a scan priority can be determined so that it won't get in the way of any other background tasks. As soon as you return to your PC, ScreenScan will de-activate and can be set to resume scanning from where it left off, if it was interrupted. To use ScreenScan you must select a standard Windows 95 screen saver, as it's currently incompatible with the OpenGL versions. If it spots a virus, a pop-up warning will appear over the screen saver advising you to run VirusScan.

McAfee also includes a novel method of keeping VirusScan up to date with the latest signature files. SecureCast uses an application called BackWeb, which automatically checks McAfee's Web site and periodically downloads new files as a background process. It will also download data from other compatible sites as 'InfoPaks' which can contain animations, audio messages or screen savers. It works over direct or modem Internet connections and will only download portions of InfoPaks when link utilisation is low.

VirusScan doesn't have the same level of scanning tools as Dr Solomon's Toolkit, but it's far easier to use and a lot cheaper to buy. Although repair performance is weaker, virus detection is as good and McAfee's Virus Detection Team now posts hourly beta virus signature updates on its Web site.