## Calling the Power Eraser commands

Power Eraser provides aggressive functionality for identifying risks on heavily infected or unstable client computers, and then acting on the identified risks. Its commands should be used only as a last resort, when all other attempts at remediation have failed and the only other option is to re-image the client computer. For more information and cautions about running Power Eraser commands, see the Symantec Endpoint Protection 12.1.5 Installation and Administration Guide.

The Power Eraser commands work differently from other commands in several ways:

- The Power Eraser command type "Scan" does not remediate the risks that it finds. It identifies the risks, and the admin then decides what action to take on each risk

- Unlike most of the other commands of the CommandService API, the runClientCommandPowerEraser() web method takes as its argument a PowerEraserCommand object that specifies detailed parameters.

A high-level view of the Power Eraser workflow looks like the following:

1. Detect heavily infected or unstable client computers that cannot be remediated by re-imaging a virtual machine.

2. Call runClientCommandPowerEraser() with a PowerEraserCommand.commandType = "Scan" argument on these computers. The scan returns a list of suspected threats.

3. Analyze each threat to determine the action to take on each one.

4. For each threat that requires remediation, call runClientCommandPowerEraser()with a PowerEraserCommand.commandType = "Remove" argument.

You can also restore files that were mistakenly removed by calling runClientCommandPowerEraser() with a PowerEraserCommand.commandType = "Restore" argument.

To ignore Power Eraser detections, call ClientService.acknowledgeRiskEventEntries(). This method takes as its only argument a String array of event IDs that identify the risks to ignore.

For detailed information, see the Reference Guide and the sample code that accompany this Integration Guide.

See Client commands reference.