Lenovo customer who suspects virus. What is the best course of action?

Question

Running virus detction locally, from the cloud, booting a standalone solution....there are several choices available.  I'd like to get some feedback on what you think the best way might be, understanding there are different types / viruses that behave differently etc.
Thanks.
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Answer 1

Hello,
Just to add to PieterV's excellent reply, these days, pretty much all anti-malware programs resort to using some sort of technology hosted in the cloud, whether its looking up sites to see if they are malicious before allowing a connection, checking the "reputation" of downloaded software by its age and prevalance, and so forth. 
Symantec had a great presentation at VB2009 called "Using the wisdom of crowds toadress the malware long tail" which explains hows a reputation system works, with a follow-up on its effectiveness presented at VB2010.  This year at VB2011, there was a very interesting presentation from Trend Micro called "File-fraction reputation based on digest of high granularity" that showed how a cloud-based system could be used to used to detect recurring segments of malicious code to detect newer malware.
That said, I think it's important to use a mixture of techniques for detection of malicious code, both online and offline.  As PCBruiser noted, if your Internet connection is unavailable or, even worse, compromised, then you cannot rely on a service based solely on having a "known good clean and working" Internet connection.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
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