Auto system scan

Am new user to avast 4 Home. Running XP Pro. Is there a way to schedule a auto virus system scan?

sorry…only the pro version allows you to schedule scans…

but the you can try this

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=3796

Differences between Avast Home and Avast Pro :
http://www.avast.com/eng/av4_version_comp.html

Eddy, why did you resuscitate this thread? ???
It’s from May and the user never came back… :cry:

Actually, although this does seem to work for an automatic scan it takes forever. You would almost have to set it to run overnight.

I tried it a couple of days ago and it seems to scan every single file on the drive. I stopped it somewhere in the middle of my mp3 files in my music collection - after about 50 minutes it had scanned just over 6000 (yes, six thousand) files in that time.

The complete manual scan I had done just after installing Avast looked at something like 57000 files in about 20 minutes - much more like it!

What are your settings? Are you scanning archives? If your scan is Thorough and includes archives, then it will take a long time.

I don’t think that mp3 files are scanned but default, have you changed the settings in any way.

What version of avast are you using?
If Pro, how are you initiating the scan, through the Pro scheduling or are you using ashquick and windows task scheduler?

I haven’t changed any of the default settings other than for my email scanning which I’ve customized to stop it warning me if there’s no subject line.
When I pull up the GUI and click on the hard drive, it’s settings are ‘normal’ - in the middle of the scale. The box is not checked to scan archived files.
If I click on the blue ball on the left of the interface (resident scanner) it says ‘customized’ and the bar is over on the right of the scale.
I’m using the Home edition, not the Pro, and did it to try out the suggestion in the thread previously referred to above using ashquick and taskscheduler.
This somehow is scanning much more than the usual scan does.

It’s not a big deal…I can just as easily scan it manually whenever I want to anyway. It’s not like I’m going to forget to do it. The manual scan works perfectly normally, it’s just this attempt to ‘cheat’ an auto scan that seems to take forever.

I just posted to suggest that if anyone tries to use the ashquick/taskscheduler method to automatically scan, then they should be prepared to go and watch a good movie (maybe ‘Gone With the Wind’ , or perhaps the 6-hour version of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ :)) while it runs.
…Unless I’ve got my settings wrong, of course ;D

[Oops - I forgot…version 4.5.549]

When you run ashquick.exe it scans every file in the location you give it, be it file, folder, partition or HDD.

This is why it is scanning mp3 files. As far as I’m aware, ashquick doesn’t use any of the settings of the regular scanner such as, default file set (or any additions you make to that list), exclusions, etc.

This is obviously why it is taking so long, it is scanning every file, even those not usually classed as vulnerable and archives which are inert until opened.