Can I scan old emails for viruses?

It seems to me that scanning incoming mails for viruses is to prevent the virus from reaching the computer by not accepting, or isolating the mail.

Once the mail is received, it is merely a record in a database type file, either in a .pst file orOutlook mailbox file.

So if you set McAfee to scan ALL files, your old mails will be included in the scan.

I have a question for you. What do you scan your old emails for? If there are viruses in those emails, those viruses have already speared wide on your computer, since you did open and read those emails.
It is either there are viruses in your computer or there is no virus at all.
Sometime, Windows acts like there are viruses, however, it may be just some bugs in some programs you run that make the system unstable.
Virus that spear by email usually send itself as an attached file to an email. And it will activate when you open the attached file. Antivirus software scan incoming mails for viruses in order to make sure that there is no virus in those emails, and most of them scan new email only since like I explained, there is no use to scan old ones.
However, any antivirus software have the option to scan all files on the hard drive. And of course those old email will be scaned too, since Outlook save those email in a local folder.

Good luck and don't worry too much about virus,

Thanks to those who answered to question why I need to scan old emails.
1. Are you saying that McAfee will spot a virus in an old email when scanning my .pst file?
2. The reason I want to scan old emails is that I discovered I had the kak virus and would like to clean the source email. Note that the kak virus is buried in an HTML email (an Active X control I think), it is not an attachment. I now have Internet Explorer security set up so that unsafe ActiveX controls will not open but the original emails STILL have the rogue HTML/Active X control. McAfee has not cleaned them. Is there any way I can clean them?

Yes McAfee scans the .pst file and if the virus is in there it will tell you.

However, the KAK virus is nasty about not wanting to die and hides itself very well.
The removal proceedures are very involved and listd on symantec's and mcafee's websites:

Goto

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wscript.kakworm.b.html

OR

http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=10509&

Good Luck

Yes McAfee scans the .pst file and if the virus is in there it will tell you.

However, the KAK virus is nasty about not wanting to die and hides itself very well.
The removal proceedures are very involved and listd on symantec's and mcafee's websites:

Goto

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wscript.kakworm.b.html

OR

http://vil.mcafee.com/dispVirus.asp?virus_k=10509&

Good Luck

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