There are lot of  anti virus programs available in the market which confuses the people to choose the best. The most important thing to consider at this point is to check how effective is their anti virus program against the virus.  Does it captures the virus correctly or just scans the system and leaves the infection?

How to check the anti virus program works effectively in your PC? Practically, you would need to wait until your system gets infected or you would need to download an infected file.  But what if  your system is already infected and your anti virus program fails to find it. You might also be thinking that way and need to test your anti virus program before you fully rely on that.

Here is the Eicar test string which you can use safely to test the effectiveness of your anti virus program.

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

This string was developed by European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research as an alternative to virus file instead of having real virus file to risk.  All you need to do is to copy the above string and save it as a text file using notepad. When you scan the system you anti virus program should find this as file as a threat.