What I want to know is how to prevent MS Word from making the request in the first place. What registry entry, if there is one, needs to be changed to disable it.

Yes, I've read the other posts about Word requesting virus scans and those solutions do not help my set up. I have virus protection software, but I do not have the options to "un-enable Office plug-ins". I want to stop Word from making the request.

Thanks.
JxB

Hi, JxB,
Thanks for asking a question here, and Welcome to the site.
Here is a link:
Computing.Net - Word requesting virus scan... (http://www.computing.net/office/wwwboard/forum/4480.html)

This link is for AVG Antivirus Scans. I don't know what Antivirus Program you have. If you don't have AVG, then please post back with your Program name.
Scroll down to "Responce Number 5", and it gives instructions on how to turn it off. Best wishes.

PS; Another thing to try is: Open any document. At the top, click on Tools, then Macro, then Security. Try setting the Security level to "Medium" or "Low".

Thanks for that advice - but I've followed as many threads on this subject as possible and have already read that Computing.Net suggestion (and many others that all suggest changing options in the AV software).

It should not matter what AV program I use, I want to stop MS Word from requesting the scan. Setting the Word security option to Low does not prevent this action.

From everything I have read, you can't do anything in Word to stop this. You have to disable it in your virus scanner. What virus scanner are you using and what version of Word?

AVG? (http://www.frontlinepc.com.au/webcontent4.htm#wordslowstart)
Norton? (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;329820#E4ADAAA)

This is in a corporate environment, using Computer Associates' eTrust AV and MS Word 2002 (v10.6612.6626) SP3

Hi, JxB,
As you know, in any corporate environment, if you are not the Administrator, those changes probably can't be made.
Have you tried contacting the Administrator, or those who look after the network?

This is in a corporate environment, using Computer Associates' eTrust AV and MS Word 2002 (v10.6612.6626) SP3

The first line of attack here would be your systems administrators. We use Norton And Office XP and 2003 And I've never seen that happen.

It may be that the system admins have specifically set your machines to do this and they don't want you changing it.

Of course Sys Admin group is always the first poc. ;)

I did some digging and think I found the appropriate registry entries under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\ComputerAssociates\eTr ustAntivirus\CurrentVersion\Realtime key:
Set the 'dwFileFilterType' variable to 2 (to use the exclude list)
Edit the 'szExcludeExtList' variable to include "|DOC|" (to allow exclusion of 'DOC' extension).

Have not tried this, since I am not the Admin, so I don't know if it really would work. If anybody has a similar environment and has the Admin rights to try it, please let me know.

Thanks.

I would not change that. I'm not 100% sure, but that setting looks like the list of files that would be checked during a scan. If you exclude DOC files, they won't be scanned.