Avast scan not working

I have installed Avast and am running a Full scan. I have often read that people are able to perform a full scan in under 1 hour or so. For me it has never been the case. I have tried running a full scan on a couple of occasions for like 3 -5 hours and have given up on it as it was going no where. Can anyone tell me what could be wrong ? My hard disk total capacity is only 160 GB of which i 120 odd is free. So cant figure out the issue.

I am attaching a pic of my present scan. It says 0% of scan completed after 40 odd mins.

Edit : I am not able to attach the pic, But that’s the case.

Have you changed any of the default settings ? my C drive which is 70Gb used and E drive 25Gb used scans in roughly 6 minute’s.

I have only set it to Silent/Gaming mode. That apart i am on default settings. My C drive has around 55 GB only. I am not able to figure out why it is taking long.

Is there any other security software running realtime ?

Some information about your system spec’s could also help us diagnose if there maybe any system related issues.

No Avast is the only Security software running real time on my system. I do have Malwarebytes, but i run it once a week, not in real time though. I just checked the status of my Full scan now. Its been 1 hour and 28 minutes and this far it has completed 8 % of the scan.

PS : If i may add, I am using the latest edition Avast Free Antivirus.

What version of windows do you have and how much ram is installed, im thinking there maybe lots of programs running in the background using up lots of memory ???

If all else fails try a repair of avast and reboot to see if that helps or next step would be a clean install of avast but it sounds like a lack memory to me so far causing the system to bog down.

Are you sure that this feature below has not been ticked

I am using Windows Vista Home Basic. This is a Core 2 duo processor with 2gb RAM. Presently i am only running the Avast scan.

I had just updated to the latest version of Avast and running the scan. So that ain’t helping i guess. So then i ll quit the scan and re install the software. Run a scan and report back.

But are you sure that it roughly takes 6 to 10 minutes only for a full scan considering my data is only around 60gb. Even on the free software ?

Well thats the speed for me but it’s a fairly fast system im using, iv got a win7 2Gb ram here at the moment that im fixing for a friend and 80Gb scans in 12 minutes for her.

If you check your task manager how many processes are running and whats your physical memory usage ?

What about quick scan…how does that run?

I uninstalled the software and reinstalled it. This time around i was able to complete a full scan in 2 hrs and 20 minutes. I guess i ll take that although it is much longer than average time.

Thanks for the support.

Personally I wouldn’t be using the Full scan as the Quick scan scans files that are either targeted by malware and present an immediate risk if infected.

  • With a resident on-access antivirus like avast, the need for frequent on-demand scans is much depreciated. For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that would be otherwise be dormant or inert. If they were active files then the on-access file system shield would be scanning them before being created, modified, opened or executed.

I have avast set to do a scheduled weekly Quick scan, set at a time and day that I know the computer will be on. If for some reason my system wasn’t on, no big deal I will catch up on the next scheduled scan.