How to Real-time Scan with Clamwin

Clamwin is a free and open source Anti-virus for Windows -- thus the suffix "win". This means that the community provides the developers tons and tons of possible virus infected files thus making Clamwin more efficient in tracking new virus than any other proprietary anti-virus. But there's a catch.

With its large database of virus definitions, Clamwin cannot do a real-time or active scan of your computer. It will not detect a virus-infected file from being copied to and from your computer. Although it does offer a scheduled scan, we know that a real-time scan if far safer.

As quoted from Clamwin's homepage,

Please note that ClamWin Free Antivirus does not include an on-access real-time scanner. You need to manually scan a file in order to detect a virus or spyware.

So how do you make a real-time scan with Clamwin? First, download and install Clamwin if you haven't done already.

Next, download and install complimentary free and open source software called Clam Sentinel.

Clam Sentinel detects file system changes like when some unauthorized program copy, or modify a file. Each file being accesed is thrown to Clamwin to do some virus-checking. This is a good thing if you want to keep your computer safe from unwanted virus. The down side however is that you computer will run slower each time you launch an application, copy files, and such. But this would not be a problem if you are already used to Norton's behavior.