Patent ID: 7716741

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system, for checking for viruses comprising: responsive to receiving a request, from an input-output processor, to write data from a file, initiating a real-time virus checker embedded on a data transfer device of the data processing system; scanning the data, with the real-time virus checker, using a combination of at least one heuristic technique and at least one virus dictionary, to determine whether the file contains a virus; responsive to determining that the file contains the virus, using the data transfer device to flag the file; notifying a modified device driver that the file contains the virus; and invoking an anti-virus program to perform a scan of the file using the modified device driver, wherein invoking an anti-virus program to perform the scan of the file containing the virus is performed by the modified device driver, and wherein the modified device driver invokes the anti-virus program to perform a scan of the entire file suspected of containing a virus in response to receiving notification of a flagged file, wherein the modified device driver utilizes a dynamic link library file to invoke the anti-virus program to perform a scan of the file.