Could desktop search and virus scanning start a carpool?

Most of us have at least two systems scanning our hard drives. In my case, one is checking them for viruses, the other is updating indexes for desktop file search. It seems like a lot of duplicated effort, since they both do very similar things:

  • Occasionally, check all files on the drive. As long as the file extension isn't excluded, open the file up, scan the contents, and do something
  • Watch the filesystem, and when files change, scan the contents and do something

In this case, the do something part (update search indexes or look for virus signatures) is probably a lot less impact on the system than all the file access work. It would be cool if a software package handled both search and virus scan, but what would be cooler is if the operating system had a scheduled scan plugin system that handled this kind of thing.

This would be easier on developers, since they could concentrate on what to do with a single file and let the system handle the grunt work. I can see other cool "scan" type features that could take advantage of this - image uploaders (Flickr, Riya, etc.), music library integration (WMP, iTunes, etc.), developer tools (code checkin and continuous build, website uploads)...

I think the real win is that it would be easier on users, since they'd have one place to manage scanning schedules. More importantly, it would prevent conflicts and minimize the effects of bad scanners. Many scanners seem to do a bad job with handling resources, and when you get two going at once they can cause your disk drive to sound like a lawnmower. System wide scans is the kind of thing I'd like to entrust to programmers like Raymond Chen...

5 Comments

  • I'd like to think that it could happen, but a long time ago I thought that the "Scheduled Tasks" functionality in Windows was going to be a great feature and that application developers would use it to do all of their scheduling; many years later, we still have most applications with a scheduling component shipping with their own "resident" schedulers.

  • Matt, I agree. But it would be nice if Windows OneCare and Windows Desktop Search used it.



    I don't know about other people, but I do notice it when products ignore the platform and reinvent the wheel. I usually don't use those products if I can avoid it.

  • +infinity. I've wanted this since the second virus scanner was released (so I could reasonably use it to back the first one!)

  • Now it's my turn to take you outside the box: I don't think virus scanners should be necessary. The idea that one's PC should have a virus scanner as a default, standard component is pathological.



    In fact, I often wish I had anti-anti-virus software.

  • > scans through files on your system on a regular basis



    Why? Shouldn't a hookable event fire when a file is created or modified? Why do we need to "scan" through the files on our system -- ever?



    The most we should ever have to do that, hopefully, is once.

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