Antivirus setup is sometimes a very confusing place. And often things are turned on that you simply do not need.
- Set the real-time scanner to not scan files on write, just on read, if that's an option. Scanning a file on write is fairly pointless if it's going to be scanned every time it's executed anyway. Have it just scan executables, and don't scanning within archives, to save CPU time.
- As for the heuristic for real-time detection, we can't make any general recommendations here, except to go with the default the software provides. Be careful when reading the install instructions for other programs before installing other software, as some of them will want you to turn off the real-time heuristic scanner off during their install. Often, a software installation involves writing to executable files, and writing to executable files is exactly what that is looking for.
- Don't worry about email scanning. If it comes on automatically and you can send and receive mail, keep it on. If you're using webmail, it's not doing anything for you, but it will stop viruses from emailing things directly from your computer. If you find you can't send or receive email anymore, turn it off without worry.
- Leave script blocking turned on.
- A lot of download software has the ability to run antivirus software when it's done. Don't worry about it. 99% of the time you downloaded it for your machine and it will get scanned when executed. It will also get scanned when copied to a floppy or CD. The only time it won't would be if you downloaded it directly to a shared drive, either on your computer, or across the network, in which case people could access it without it going through your virus scanner. However, a) that's what the 'scan on write' scanner is for that we recommended above you turn off, so if you often download things to one computer and then immediately run them on another, leave it on, and b) those other computers should be running antivirus too, and catch the virus there, so this entire thing should be moot.
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Antivirus