I have just ran a" thorough search" with 4.7 home edition.It scanned 269692/5952 files/ folders , a total of 19.76 gb but took a total of 3hrs8mins 24secs. Is this length of time normal ? If not , any advice would be appreciated . (Running windows xp with broadband connection).
Thorough, is as the name implies is very through, especially if you also select archives to be scanned and the time you state seems about right for the data scanned.
A Standard scan, without archives is good enough for a routine on-demand scan. I have only ever done one thorough scan with archives, shortly after installing avast, just to confirm a clean start state, after that Standard without archives once a week.
Archives by their nature are inert, you need to unpack them and then run any executables, before that the Standard Shield should have scanned them.
As you suggest , I selected "archive scan " . In future I wont select this option . Many thanks for guidance.
Your welcome, the on-demand scan, Standard sensitivity is also a good compromise between performance and protection especially when backed up by the avast resident scanners.