Don't see reason for Unable To Scan

When I run a scan I get the Unable to scan message but I cannot get any more information about these file. How do I access the reason for this.

When you say “I get the Unable to scan message” do you mean in the scan results ?

Provided the whole listing of the scan results isn’t blank. There is a possibility that the field/s or window isn’t large enough to see the contents of a column. You can expand column widths in most windows columns by moving the mouse pointer to the column headings and hover over the separator between the columns. The mouse pointer will change shape, press ans hold the Shits key and drab the column to the right to expand.

The Report window has three columns: Path, Infection Details, Status. Any infected file has information in all three columns but there is no info on Unable To Scan files.

What if you click / right click ?

Some files will be “cannot/unable to scan” for various reasons.

  1. File is an archive and therefore is inert.
  2. File is password protected. If this happens avast cannot know the password.
  3. The file belongs to another process which avast cannot scan.
  4. The file is a zip/packed file.

The most likely reasons are #1 or #4. You may need to adjust your scan settings.

In that Scan History screen, highlight the scan that you want more information about and click Detailed report. Does that give you any more information ?

If that still doesn’t give you the information, can you run that scan again and when you get the message “Unable to scan message” can you take a screenshot of the message and attach it to your reply.

I’m running Avast Mac Security v.12.5 on a MacBook Pro 3.1 with OS X 10.11.6 (El Capitan). I just took the standard IT support approach, I uninstalled Avast using Avast Uninstall and reinstalled it. I am now running a full scan and will post a screenshot of the report when it finishes.

Wrong forum section, post/ask here: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=5.0

Now that is a whole different ball game as you are in the Avast for Windows products section of the forum.

That means we are trying to give advice relating to the windows version of avast.

You would be best creating your topic in the Avast Mac Security. You may even see topics relating to your issue.

Thanks for getting me to the right area.

You’re welcome.

You’re welcome, hopefully you will find the answer to your question there.