Updating Your Anti-Virus Software

All anti-virus (av) software consists of a main program, an engine, and a definition file. The main program is what you see on the screen when you are scanning your computer for virus'. The definition file is a database that contains a list of virus' and an internal description of how to detect and clean it. The engine is the interface between the program and the definition file (of course, this is a simplistic description). This is done this way so there is a smaller file to download in order to detect the new virus' as the become prevalent. Occasionally we need to update the engine in order to detect the very complex virus.

This page will tell you what definition file needs updating and, if needed, the engine. You can check you Program Version, Engine Version, and Definition file Version by running your virus Program and select, from the menu, Help then About...
The result will be a window dialog box that displays all the information about your Anti-Virus Software (All three parts). An example of this is shown HERE (a popup window will show). As you can see, I am showing a picture of McAfee Version 7.0.0 Program with a Definition file Version 4318 and a Scan Engine Version 4.2.60. The important part of this in our case is the Definition file. This will be the most common part that we Update from our Software Manufacturer (McAfee, Norton, TrendMicro, etc..) and the part that we are concerned about in this document.

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