What does the heuristic scan consist of?
The heuristic file scan tries to discover any possible new and as yet uncataloged viruses that may have infected your system’s files. As the virus to be detected is supposedly unknown, no strings or routines can be searched for. A deductive process based on experience with currently known viruses is carried out. It then checks executable programs for possible virus activity. The problem is that a virus is a program like any other and uses the same CPU instructions. A set of instructions performs a specific action and a set of actions determines the likelihood of a program being infected. In the end it is the user’s choice to act or not on a program tagged as suspect. It is important to note that it is normal to have some “suspicious” files on your hard disk. An indication of real virus presence would be to have several files tagged as suspect, especially files that never before had recorded virus incidents, such as DOS programs like FORMAT, MEM, DOSKEY, other operating system programs
