I use Norton Antivirus 2001. In options | system | exclusions are listed the following:

*.dbx
*.nch
*.VI?
Excel.EXE
MSACCESS.EXE
POWERPNT.EXE
WINWORD.EXE

These must have been default settings, as I don't recall putting anything in exclusions.

Can anyone explain the rationale of having these things listed in exclusions? I'd think one would want to have everything scanned.

What really confuses me is that .dbx is the extension for Outlook Express files, and you can hardly find anything more susceptible to infection than that. So why would those be excluded? Is it only that if email scanning is enabled, it shouldn't be necessary? (But what if email scanning is not enabled?) Or is there something about the way .dbx files are stored that would make a manual scan ineffective?

Someone must have a better idea than I do of how these things work!