I have a late 2009 iMac with Mountain Lion. I have downloaded both Sophos and Clamxav, but I can't find a way to use either to scan a thumb drive. Is it possible with either of these, or with some other recommended AV? Perhaps I'm missing something.
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antivirus to scan a thumb drive
- Thread starter zeppo2
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I don't recommend using Sophos, but you can use ClamXav do scan. This should show you how to enable scanning of any drive you attach. After you've performed the scan, I recommend you disable the Sentry feature, as it can consume system resources, and constant scanning is not needed with OS X.
Macs are not immune to malware, but no true viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any since it was released over 12 years ago. The only malware in the wild that can affect Mac OS X is a handful of trojans, which can be easily avoided by practicing safe computing (see below). 3rd party antivirus apps are not necessary to keep a Mac malware-free, as long as a user practices safe computing, as described in the following link.
Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.Thanks. I guess I could say "antitrojan" instead of "antivirus".
I see now why I can't find the setting you point me to It says Sentry is not available in the Mac App Store version.
As far as safe practices, I play it safe, which is why I want to scan thumb drives with files even from people I trust.
One might also say it is safe practice to only download apps from the App Store-- which puts me at odds with downloading the version of ClamXav that is not available on the app store. A Catch22 I guess. But unless there is some reason I shouldn't download from clamxav.com, I'll go ahead and do it.
I suppose I should uninstall the version of Clamx I got from the App Store first.
I see now why I can't find the setting you point me to It says Sentry is not available in the Mac App Store version.
As far as safe practices, I play it safe, which is why I want to scan thumb drives with files even from people I trust.
One might also say it is safe practice to only download apps from the App Store-- which puts me at odds with downloading the version of ClamXav that is not available on the app store. A Catch22 I guess. But unless there is some reason I shouldn't download from clamxav.com, I'll go ahead and do it.
I suppose I should uninstall the version of Clamx I got from the App Store first.
I give up. After downloading from the clamx website and installing that version, the option to launch Sentry was grayed out to be inaccessible. So there was still no way to direct it to scan a thumb drive.
Now, when I try to use the ClamAV Engine REMOVER, I get a pop up saying:
ClamAV Engine REMOVER is damaged and cant be opened. You should eject the disk image.
ClamAV Engine REMOVER is on the disk image ClamXav_2.6.4.dmg. Safari downloaded this disk image today at 2:40 PM from www.clamxav.com"
The options are to either "Cancel" or "Eject Disk Image". The results of these two options are the same however, except one keeps the program open and one closes it. But either way it is canceling the attempt. So I tried to delete the dmg and try a fresh download, but I still get the same error. At any rate, I suppose I'll revert to a time machine back up from a some time ago before I had these crash issues with Safari and see if that helps. I'll just back up my documents to thumb drives first.
Now, when I try to use the ClamAV Engine REMOVER, I get a pop up saying:
ClamAV Engine REMOVER is damaged and cant be opened. You should eject the disk image.
ClamAV Engine REMOVER is on the disk image ClamXav_2.6.4.dmg. Safari downloaded this disk image today at 2:40 PM from www.clamxav.com"
The options are to either "Cancel" or "Eject Disk Image". The results of these two options are the same however, except one keeps the program open and one closes it. But either way it is canceling the attempt. So I tried to delete the dmg and try a fresh download, but I still get the same error. At any rate, I suppose I'll revert to a time machine back up from a some time ago before I had these crash issues with Safari and see if that helps. I'll just back up my documents to thumb drives first.