Test your antivirus Auto Protection using EICAR test string

• Open a text editor such as Notepad.

Do not use a word processor, such as Microsoft Word or WordPad, to create the file. Word processors add extra header information to the file, which will cause it to not be detected.

• Copy the following text into your text editor.

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

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• Save the Notepad file say "test.txt"

• Exit the Notepad

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not exceeding 128 characters. The only whitespace characters allowed are the space character, tab, LF, CR, CTRL-Z. To keep things simple the file uses only upper case letters, digits and punctuation marks, and does not include spaces. The only thing to watch out for when typing in the test file is that the third character is the capital letter "O", not the digit zero. 

If your antivirus program warns you that it auto-protect your system by finding virus called "EICAR testing string virus", you will come to know that your antivirus software is installed correctly and working fine.. else you need to check your security settings. and also need not to worry much as EICAR string is most trust-able harmless virus (!!) :-)

To know more you can view :
http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm