I've never been hit with anything either. Reason why? I visit the same sites everyday and hardly wander from those sites. Personally, in my opinion, I think scanning multiple times a week is too much. It uses resources that could be better used elsewhaere, and the constant scanning can cause premature wear and tear on the hard drive. 

Oh and I take care of other computers, and they scan once a month, and have no issues. Pretty sure other people around here scan once a month as well.

So there... 

Lol, well i commend you for only ever visiting the "same" sites everyday and hardly wandering from them. That puts you in a vast minority of internet users. Even though that is no guarantee that those sites cannot become infected and transfer that infection to your system, but i digress. Your argument about "using resource that could be better used elsewhere" is flawed. Since when is security a bad use of resources. I call it common sense and protecting yourself from harm. And if one uses that same common sense they are also backing up their data so if a hard drive does go belly up then you have back ups. So maybe your hard drive will last a few hours longer than mine.... big woop. I prefer safety and piece of mind over the fact that it costs 0.11c per Gb to replace a HDD and transfer your sensibly backed up data to it. So keep scanning once a month if you like, that's your choice. I say it's irresponsible, you don't..that's ok. Your entitled to that view. I on the other hand will keep scanning twice a week and backing up my data in case of HDD failure knowing that i am doing the right thing.

What makes you think what you are doing is the right thing? Honestly I think your a bit paranoid. As I said before I am sure there are plenty of users on this board that perform scans only once a month and backup their data once a month. Your argument about hard drives being cheap is flawed. What about those who can't afford even a cheap new hard drive? As for my argument about resources I only have 512 MB of RAM on this machine and can't afford to upgrade so scanning in the background is something I would rather not do when I am running Windows.

No one's paranoid.

No one's right. No one's wrong.

Nimbin does 'a'. kona does 'b'.

And it all matters zilch..... because the Mayans will have the last word.

Between now and late December I'm doing nightly backups and scanning weekly.  After that, Doc, I'm with you.

That may be so....

I scan every day - it's constant anyway...checking what comes and goes.

I backup every day...with redundancies to a third drive ...and full system image every week.

HDs going cheap isn't flawed at all.  It's true.  The only issue is when 'cheap' may be interpreted other than 'relative'.

What's often the case is those who DON'T scan regularly simply DON'T KNOW they ARE infected/hit with something....

"What's that smell?"

"It's my crocodile repellent."

"There AREN'T any crocodiles here in Melbourne."

"See?  It works!"

Hard drives being cheap does not matter when you are broke. 

Okay, then, what about scanning just before or when you go to bed... when you're not doing anything important?  Many scanners these days have a shutdown PC when done feature, so why not use that just before going to bed, thus saving your resources for things you want/need to do. 

As for only having 512mb of RAM, you'd be in a small minority these days with such limited resources, so it's a bit unfair/closed minded to expect others with much more powerful systems to behave as you do on a less powerful machine.  I am with Nimbin on this one, because I have more than ample resources to run video editing programs and several other items while scanning, so to err on the side of caution I scan at least every other day... sometimes more often if I visited sites I'm not too familiar with.

No need to scan at all Starkers - I mostly use Linux on this machine. Plus i shut the machine down every night before going to bed.

So all that back and forth with Nimbin was....?????

Why ask why?

Sorry Doc, I was just trying to point out that perhaps there are better things to do then constantly scan for viruses and malware on a computer.