Microsoft

Scanning Your System

Key to MSE’s operation is the system scan—scanning the files on your computer for known or suspected malware. As discussed previously, scanning can be either automatic or manual. But you might not know that MSE offers several different types of scans, with different levels of effectiveness.

Understanding Quick Scans

The two primary types of scans offered by MSE are Quick scans and Full scans. As you might suspect, a Quick scan takes less time than a Full scan—but doesn’t scan as many files as the latter type of scan.

A Quick scan is designed to scan those areas of your hard disk that are most likely to contain malware; it skips those areas that offer little or no danger. It’s likely that a Quick scan will only ...