I hope I’m just missing something, but when I wanted to scan my external HDD, I clicked on the Other Drives tab, and it will only let me do Floppies or CD/DVD drives. I tried each, put in the drive letter of the external drive (E:), but it would not do it. This sounds like a serious oversight for Avast.
This really seems odd. Is there a way to do this that I don’t see?
Have you tried this?
Thanks, alanrf, but the page you show is so small I can’t read what it is, or were I find it.
Anyway, stupid me, I think I got the answer. I just turned on the external HDD, and did a regular scan, and sure enough, after doing my internal C:drive, it went ahead and scanned the external one too. Gues all I had to do was turn the sucker on.
When you click on the picture, it gets bigger 
In any case, you can also use the “Folders” option and select whatever drive(s) you like.
Surre enogh, it did get bigger when I clicked on it.
Anyhow, as it was scanning my E: HDD, it found a couple of trojan horses, but later on stopped with a notice that the drive was too big and could not continue. That is odd, as it is 120 GB, less than half full, and much smaller than my internal 250 GB HDD.
I did before try picking just the folders on the external drive, but it did not recognize them. Whole thing is odd. Perhaps because that drive is mostly backup files from the main drive, using Retrospect Backup.
I’ll continue to fidle around and see if I can solve it.
Do you mean that the chest wasn’t big enough to accept the trojan and not your HDD ?
You can change chest sizes, right click the avast ‘a’ icon, select Program Settings, Chest, the size that I think is likely to cause the problem is the Maximum file size to send, that may be smaller than the size of the trojan file.
Thanks David, I don’t think it was the Chest, as it said something to the effect of “There is not enough space on the disk”, but in any case I increased the sizes in the Chest."
Anyhow, I started over, and this time in selecting drives, I did not click the box for the E: drive, but at the bottom, just typed in E:\ and it then started directly with that drive.
A couple of times it found a Trojan again, which I sent to the chest. I then hit Continue, and once it gave me the same error message about drive size, but closed that, and the scan seemed to continue all right until the end.
So, I know how to do it now, the only trouble is (and this is the same with scans of the main drive too), that whenever a virus is found, the notice pops up and the scan won’t continue. I wish Avast would do the entire scan, and then list all the viruses for my decision to send to the Chest, Delet, etc. This way have to stick around the computer until the scan is done, not a good idea.
If you get the drive size message then your adjustment of the chest size didn’t work. Believe me when I say increase the Max file size that is the true culprit.
These automated options are only available in the Pro version. This is a limitation of the Home (free) version that it has interactive input requirement, there have to be differences in the Home/Pro version and this is one of them, the programmers have to eat ;D
In the Home version you can check the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. This way, no action will be taken and you will given the results at the end of the scan (and you can perform actions from there). Over time this will become less of an issue, as the resident, on-access scanners are designed to intercept infection before it gets into your system.
OK, DavidR, many thanks, your suggestions make a lot of sense. I hesitated to check the “Don’t show this again” as was afraid I’d never know if it found and viruses, but if I can deal with them at the end, that solves my main problem. I turned the sound back on to do the external drive, so when it found something (which it did), I could hear the signal from the other room. Now, I’ll turn it off again!
I’ll increase the Max size even more to be sure. And putting the eicar virus test file is a great idea to get it over with quckly. ;D I’ll do it.
Thanks again for the good ideas.
You’re welcome.
These are my Chest settings and I have never had a size message, it should cope with most situations other than a huge archive or media file being detected as infected.
David,
Just a question about the eicar virus test file. I read the directions at the Avast site http://www.avast.com/eng/eicar-antivirus-test-file.html, but what kind of file do I paste the line into. Do I use notepad or wordpad and then name the file eicar.com? I know this should be simple but I don’t want to make a mistake. I love the idea that I won’t have to stick around every time that I scan for viruses.
Ro Ro
If you want to do it manually use notepad when you save or save as, type the File name: eicar.com and the Save as type: change to All Files, and click the Save button. See image, in that example, this is in the My Documents folder, though you can save it to any folder (I would recommend saving it elsewhere where you can find it) you just need to navigate to it and select that folder.
The easiest way is to simply download it from the eicar site http://www.eicar.com/anti_virus_test_file.htm. Pause the web shield or you won’t get it downloaded, the standard shield will detect it, just choose No action that will leave the file where you saved it to.
David,
I downloaded the file and when Avast Warned me , I checked the “Don’t show this dialog next time” box, but there is no “No Action” button, so I just clicked “Continue”.
Here is a snapshot of what I get from Avast.
I just finished the scan and it showed me the infected or corrupted files and gave me the choice of what to do. Thanks for the info. It was a great help.
RoRo
The continue button will effectively achieve the same though, this usually means there are other files to scan (on-demand scan not on-access), so I can only assume you were scanning more than one file (on-demand or ashQuick scan).
Thanks David,
I am sorry to be so slow in responding. I find that I have to leave the eicar file on the machine in an early file so it picks it up each time I do a scan. The Continue button only works in the present scan, but that still helps greatly.
RoRo 8)
You’re welcome.
Yes the don’t show this window again and the continue button only works for the current session.