Your antivirus software claims to be working all the time, monitoring every file you access for any potential threats - but is this really how it is? EICARgen can help you find out.

This tiny freebie has a single task: to generate the EICAR Anti-Virus Test File on demand. EICAR isn't an actual virus, not even executable code (it's just a few characters of text), but it is something which all antivirus programs should detect as a threat. And so, if you allow EICARgen to create its file, you should find this is detected by your antivirus tool immediately, or when you try to access it.

EICARgen is a console-based tool, and is easiest run from a shortcut. Configure it like this.

Right-click EICARgen.exe, select Create Shortcut, then right-click the shortcut and click Properties.

Click in the "Target" box and surround the path with quotes, like: "C:\Users\mike\Downloads\EICARgen_V2_1\EICARgen.exe"

At the end of that text, add a space, and the file type you'd like to create (zip, pdf, xls). Try zip, so it looks something like "C:\Users\mike\Downloads\EICARgen_V2_1\EICARgen.exe" zip

Double-click your shortcut, and wait to see what happens. Does your antivirus raise an alert immediately? Within a few seconds? What happens if you select the file? Try to unzip it?

Don't necessarily be alarmed if your software doesn't react in a hurry. Malware in an archive can't be launched directly, so it's reasonable to wait until it's extracted before jumping in. (Your antivirus settings may have a few tweaks to adjust this, but keep in mind that checking archives slows up the scanning process.)

If this zip/ pdf/ xls test isn't enough, EICARgen can also try to create a regular plain text EICAR file. Just pass it the name of the file you'd like to create, like "C:\Users\mike\Downloads\EICARgen_V2_1\EICARgen.exe" eicar.txt

If your antivirus package allows the file to be created at all, try scanning it manually, copying it, opening it - whatever you like.

Version 2.1 of EICARgen can create an Excel spreadsheet (.xls) with the EICAR test file embedded with OLE.