I ran a scan with ClamWin, a free and open-source antivirus program for Microsoft Windows systems, on a user's system recently when she thought the system might be infected with malware. I ran the ClamWin scan after I scanned the system with McAfee AntiVirus, the active antivirus program on the system providing real-time protection, which did not find any malware. The scan, which ran for many hours, flagged many files as containing malware. It was difficult to note the names and locations of files flagged as containing malware when they were flagged as the results would scroll quickly by as the program went on to scan other files. As I assumed I would be able to save the results to a file when the scan completed, that did not concern me. However, when the scan completed I was unable to save the results to a file because the button that would allow me to save the results was grayed out.
You can still access the results of a scan in such cases, though, because when
you exit from viewing the scan results, the program automatically appends the
results to C:\ProgramData\.clamwin\log\ClamScanLog.txt. The
ProgamData directory is a hidden directory that you won't see in the
Windows File Explorer
unless you have configured it to display hidden files and folders. You
can see the directory is present if you
open a command prompt window
and issue the command dir /ah — the "/ah" tells the
dir command to display files and folders with the attribute "hidden."
E.g.:
C:\>dir /ah
Volume in drive C is OS
Volume Serial Number is 4445-F6ED
Directory of C:\
08/21/2022 07:38 PM <DIR> $Recycle.Bin
07/08/2017 03:45 PM <DIR> $Windows.~WS
02/14/2024 10:43 AM <DIR> $WinREAgent
10/30/2015 02:18 AM 1 BOOTNXT
08/21/2022 01:01 PM 112 bootTel.dat
02/28/2024 03:54 PM <DIR> Config.Msi
11/04/2011 01:20 AM 30,425 dell.sdr
07/14/2009 12:08 AM <JUNCTION> Documents and Settings [C:\Users]
03/03/2024 11:51 PM 8,192 DumpStack.log.tmp
03/04/2024 03:51 PM 6,373,736,448 hiberfil.sys
01/30/2012 09:36 PM <DIR> MSOCache
03/03/2024 11:51 PM 8,589,934,592 pagefile.sys
03/03/2024 09:48 AM <DIR> ProgramData
10/11/2023 09:00 AM <DIR> Recovery
03/03/2024 11:51 PM 268,435,456 swapfile.sys
01/28/2012 08:26 PM <DIR> System Recovery
03/04/2024 08:00 PM <DIR> System Volume Information
7 File(s) 15,232,145,226 bytes
10 Dir(s) 795,701,448,704 bytes free
C:\>>Though the log file containing scan results is beneath a hidden directory,
you can access it from a text editor such as
Windows Notepad
by typing in the directory path and file name, i.e.,
C:\ProgramData\.clamwin\log\ClamScanLog.txt when you choose
Open to open a file, or you could open it from a command prompt
window as shown below.
C:\&>notepad C:\ProgramData\.clamwin\log\ClamScanLog.txt C:\&>
The ClamScanLog.txt file will contain the results of all scans run on the system, unless it was edited to remove prior results, with the results of the latest scan at the bottom of the file.
