Microsoft to unveil free anti-virus by year end

Microsoft Corporation is getting ready to unveil a long-anticipated free anti-virus service for personal computers that will compete with products sold by Symantec Corp and McAfee Inc. A Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday that, Microsoft would "soon" make a trial version, or product beta, available via its website, but declined to provide a specific date. The free service is code-named Morro after Brazil's Morro de Sao Paolo beach

Microsoft has said Morro, will offer basic features for fighting a wide range of viruses, which would likely make it comparable to low-end consumer products from Symantec and McAfee that cost about $40 per year. Their top-selling products are security suites that come up with features including encryption, password protection, firewalls, parental controls and data backup. Microsoft entered that market three years ago with Live OneCare, which turned out to be a commercial flop. It announced plans in November to kill that product suite, saying it would launch the free Morro service by the end of 2009. Microsoft has said it will provide protection from several types of malicious software including viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans.

How can you test your antivirus software...??

Creating A Test Virus:
Have you ever wondered if your anti-virus software is really working? Would you like to see what happens when it detects a virus? Here's a safe way to test your computer's virus protection that doesn't require you to have a real virus.

First, open Notepad. Then copy and paste into it the text on the line below. (It should all be on one line.)

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

Then select File, Save, select All Files for the file type, then save the file as eicar.com

Your anti-virus software may prevent you from saving the file as eicar.com, which is a sign that it is working effectively. If it doesn't raise an alert, try scanning the folder where you saved eicar.com. To see what happens if you try to run a file containing a virus, double-click eicar.com to open it.

Explanation:
The file eicar.com you have created is completely safe. It is not a virus. It is a standard test file developed by the European Institute for Computer Anti-virus Research (EICAR). All anti-virus products are programmed to detect this file as if it was a real virus. Therefore you can safely use it to test whether your anti-virus software works, without fear of infecting your computer.

Conclusion:
If your anti-virus product should fail to prevent you from running the file, it will simply display the text "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE" in a DOS box. No harm will have been done, but you should probably consider using a better anti-virus product, because if it had been a real virus, your computer would by now be infected!