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

The boot sector is one of the primary targets for anti-virus scanning because boot sector viruses embed themselves in the Master Boot Record or volume boot record, allowing them to execute before the OS loads and evade detection. Anti-virus programs specifically inspect this area to detect and remove such infections.

Deleted files are typically inaccessible at the filesystem level and pose no active execution threat, making them a non-standard target for AV scanning.

The Windows process list is a runtime artifact that AV tools may monitor, but it is not itself scanned for virus signatures - it is not a storage location for malicious code.

Password-protected files cannot be read or scanned by anti-virus software without the decryption key, so they are excluded from signature-based scanning.