- May 19, 2011
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With the average anti-virus scanner, I would expect that if I requested a full system scan (let's assume that my account has admin rights and I'm using something later than XP), that locations that my user doesn't necessarily have access to (e.g. other user's profiles on the system, or the occasional Windows folder that doesn't allow users access without altering permissions first), would also be scanned.
ie. a "full system scan" means everything gets checked.
However, I suspect that in MSE only areas that the logged-on user has access to get checked. My suspicion was raised when I scanned a "Documents and Settings" folder on another hard disk connected via USB and it did it in hardly any time at all, which seems unlikely considering there was at least 10GB of data to scan.
I've just this moment had another play with this problem, and it seemed the best way to start was to pick a Windows system folder that I don't have immediate access to. I picked C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG. Explorer said 'access denied' (with the choice of gaining access, which I declined), then I right-clicked and picked 'scan with MSE'. That resulted in MSE saying it had scanned 147 items, so it seems that it could access that folder without me having to do anything unexpected (which is good / in line with my expectations).
If someone else has a multi-user Windows system, can you try scanning another user's profile while logged into your own (assuming that you don't already have access to theirs)?
ie. a "full system scan" means everything gets checked.
However, I suspect that in MSE only areas that the logged-on user has access to get checked. My suspicion was raised when I scanned a "Documents and Settings" folder on another hard disk connected via USB and it did it in hardly any time at all, which seems unlikely considering there was at least 10GB of data to scan.
I've just this moment had another play with this problem, and it seemed the best way to start was to pick a Windows system folder that I don't have immediate access to. I picked C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG. Explorer said 'access denied' (with the choice of gaining access, which I declined), then I right-clicked and picked 'scan with MSE'. That resulted in MSE saying it had scanned 147 items, so it seems that it could access that folder without me having to do anything unexpected (which is good / in line with my expectations).
If someone else has a multi-user Windows system, can you try scanning another user's profile while logged into your own (assuming that you don't already have access to theirs)?
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