4.4. Testing Microsoft Security Essentials

You may want to test whether or not Microsoft Security Essentials is installed and working correctly on your computer.
There is never any need to download "live" viruses for testing purposes.

A number of years ago the anti-virus community worked together to create a test-file which could be used precisely for this purpose and created the EICAR anti-virus test file.
(EICAR originally stood for the "European Institute for Computer Anti-virus Research" but the organisation now has a wider remit of IT security in general.)

The EICAR anti-virus test file is a simple text file of only 68-bytes which is also an executable DOS program (as such it will run in Windows) which prints the message EICAR-ANTIVIRUS-STANDARD-TEST-FILE! when executed.

There is much information about the EICAR anti-virus test file at http://eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm, it is highly recommended that you read the information on this page before proceeding with the tests.

For convenience the files are also available from our website from the following links :

Links to these files will be given when required, there is no need to try to download these files now.

Depending upon how you're connecting to the internet there may be an anti-virus program which prevents downloading the programs following the "standard http" links in which case you should use the "SSL enabled https" links. Using the https links encrypts the data between your browser and the server, thus preventing scanning while in transit, the file is decrypted, and scannable, when saved to your local hard-disk.
By using the "SSL enabled https" links you may also be warned that the drupal6.org security certificate is invalid, it is safe to use this link to download these files.