Particle Measuring Systems encourages our customers to use an Anti-Virus program on Facility Net and Pharmaceutical Net computers to protect their system. We use Trend Micro to protect our in house systems with the below configurations and adjustments. Facility Net does not access the internet and therefore is not a portal for the introduction of viruses. Further, the function of Facility Net is to record data from the appropriate instruments. Therefore, data files must be created to store this data. Following the simple steps below will allow proper operation of Facility Net but will not increase the exposure to viruses.

1) To ensure the virus scanner doesn't slow down the operation of Facility Net and Pharmaceutical Net, please configure your virus scanner to exclude the following files:

C:\Facility\. (All files and subfolders)

C:\Windows\fac*.ini

C:\Windows\fv*.ini

Facility Net and Pharmaceutical Net are not targets for virus programmers to attack. Very few viruses use or attack ini files but may rather be put on the computer as ini files. For this reason, we are not suggesting excluding "ALL" ini files from the scan just the ones directly associated with Facility Net (listed above in exclusion list).

2) For customers using Ethernet instruments please check your Virus software for Firewalls. We have had situations where customers can not configure an Ethernet instrument in Facility Net or Pharmaceutical Net. We found the anti-virus program (i.e. Norton Anti-Virus) had a firewall that had to be disabled before they could multicast to the instrument. This has affected our software's email notifications as well.

Please be advised that full virus scans will slow the whole operating system including our software. This is why live scanners should be configured to run only once a week. Running full scans daily is unnecessary and will only hinder the system's performance.