The advanced settings are exclusively for users with advanced knowledge. It is not advisable to change these settings if you are not completely sure of what you are doing, as it could affect the way your product works and also your computer security.
The options available are the following:
This option lets you detect potentially unwanted programs -taskbars, unknown shortcut icons, etc.- that get installed on your PC when installing other software.
Your Panda product maintains a Collective Intelligence local cache with up-to-the-minute information on the most active threats in the community. Select this option to re-scan processes loaded in memory after each cache update.
Hackers sometimes use techniques that involve injecting malicious code into legitimate applications in order to secretly perform dangerous actions on your computer.
Thanks to its behavior blocker, your Panda product checks all actions performed by the applications installed on your computer, blocking all those that could be dangerous to ensure your security.
This option is enabled by default and it is not advisable to disable it.
The behavioral analysis operates as a last line of defense against malware that manages to run on a system having evaded all other detection and scanning technologies.
This protection intercepts the operations performed by the applications installed on your computer, checking them before allowing the processes to run completely. This real-time check determines whether or not processes can be run based on their behavior.
This protection greatly increases the detection capabilities of your antivirus, so it is advisable to keep it enabled.
Select this option to scan compressed files in the on-demand scans launched from the console.
Select this option to scan compressed files in on-access scans.
You will be asked to confirm if you want to send detected viruses to quarantine (this option is disabled by default).
This option does not affect scans performed right-clicking a file in Windows® Explorer (Right-click > Scan with Panda).
Every time you open an executable file (normally
a file with an .exe extension), your product queries the cloud to check
if it is malware or not. To ensure the security of your computer, and
under certain circumstances, your product may prevent executable files
from running for a few seconds until a reply is received from the Collective
Intelligence servers (the cloud).
This option lets you configure the maximum number of seconds that executable
files can stay blocked awaiting a reply from the cloud. This must be a
period between 10 and 60 seconds. By default, the maximum wait time is
30 seconds.
As mentioned, this blocking feature only affects executable files (normally those with an .exe extension). It doesn't affect documents, photos, videos, etc.
When your Panda product neutralizes malware, it stores it in a quarantine folder for several days (7 by default), before it is permanently removed.
The option to automatically empty the quarantine is enabled by default, even though you can disable it through the relevant option. Use the drop-down menu to configure the quarantine to empty itself every three days, every week or every month.
If you choose 'Never', the detected malware will stay quarantined indefinitely as it won't be removed automatically. In any event, you will be able to delete it manually. For more information, refer to the What can I do with quarantined files? section.
The option to automatically empty the quarantine only affects files detected as malware. It doesn't affect suspicious files.
This section lets you enable or disable the warnings that the product displays on detecting malware, as well as create an advanced log file.
An advanced log is a text file with technical information about the scans performed. If you want to save the log to a specific directory, specify it in the Path field.
Finally, if for some reason you want to clear the information available in the reports and statistics, use the Clear button.
If you don't want to scan a specific file or
folder, you can exclude it from the scans from this section. Follow the
steps below to create an exclusion:
Click Add.
Browse to the file or folder that you want to exclude, and select the checkbox to the left.
Click OK.
If you want to eliminate any of the exclusions you have added, select it and click Delete.
You can also configure the extensions to exclude from scanning (for example: .xls, .doc, .ppt, etc.). Files with those extensions will not be scanned.
To select the extensions:
Click Add.
Enter a file extension in the text field. If you enter multiple extensions, separate them with " / ".
Click Add.