Which of the following items of a computer system will an anti-virus program scan for viruses?

The boot sector (MBR and Volume Boot Record) is executed by the BIOS/UEFI before the operating system loads, making it a high-value target for persistent malware. Anti-virus scanners specifically examine the boot sector to detect boot viruses and rootkits that embed themselves there to achieve pre-OS execution and persistence.

Deleted files are not reliably accessible to an AV scanner because their data may be overwritten; they are not a primary scan target in standard AV operation.

While some security tools monitor the Windows process list for behavioral anomalies, this is runtime monitoring, not a file-based virus scan.

Password-protected files cannot be decrypted or fully inspected by an AV program without the password, so they are typically excluded from standard virus scans.