When an anti-virus or security program
quarantines a file by renaming and moving it into a virus vault (chest) or a dedicated quarantine folder, that file is essentially disabled and prevented from causing any harm to your system. The quarantined file is
safely held there and no longer a threat until you take action to delete it. One reason for doing this is to prevent deletion of a crucial file that may have been flagged as a "
false positive" especially if the scanner uses
heuristic analysis technology. Heuristics is the ability of a scanning program to detect
possible new variants of malware before the vendor can get samples and update the program's definitions for detection. Heuristics uses non-specific detection methods to find new or unknown malware which allows the anti-virus to detect and stop if before doing any harm to your system. The disadvantage to using heuristics is that it is not as reliable as signature-based detection (blacklisting) and can potentially increase the chances that a non-malicious program is flagged as suspicious or infected. If that is the case, then you can restore the file and add it to the exclusion or ignore list. Doing this also allows you to view and investigate the files while keeping them from harming your computer.
Quarantine is just an added safety measure. When the quarantined file is
known to be malicious, you can
delete it at any time usually by launching the program which removed it, going to the Quarantine tab, and chosing the option to delete.
You didn't say what Vipre product you are using. This
Quick Start Guide explains the quarantine store and how to manage quarantined items on page 15.
If using Windows XP, quarantined items are store in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Sunbelt\AntiMalware\Quarantine.
In Vista quarantined items are stored in C:\ProgramData\Sunbelt\AntiMalware\Quarantine.
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