Trend Micro is the Computer Virus Scanner that is recommended for use in our institute. I have the virus scanner running in my laptop and desktop computer. When running normally, the Trend Micro icon shows blue color on Windows XP system tray. Today, it’s a different story. I have a red icon instead on the usual blue one.

Trend Micro’s OfficeScanNT RealTime Scan red icon designates that the service was not started during start up of the computer. The OfficeScanNT RealTime Scan is vital for virus free computer as it Performs Real-time, Scheduled, and Manual scan on OfficeScan clients. This not running will pose some danger to the computer being infected with a computer virus or worm.

Running Trend Micro’s OfficeScanNT RealTime Scan Service:
Click Start -> Run
CMD -> press enter
On the black Windows Command window type
Net start ntrtscan -> press enter
It will show the message that the OfficeScanNT RealTime Scan service was started successfully.

I have noted immediately the Trend Micro icon on the Windows System Tray turn to blue color. Blue color indicates that it’s running normal operation. This assures that the Anti-Virus Scanner is working and is scanning real time for spyware, worms, trojan, boot, file and memory viruses that is going to infect the computer.