Just a reality check - I’m still using the Free version of 4.8 on WinXP Home. A user initiated scan of the hard drive is taking an inordinate amount of time, in my opinion. It takes 18.5 hours to complete a thorough scan (including archives) of 217 Gigabytes (Total Size of Files Scanned). I mean, 18.5 hours? That puts a machine out of commission for a full day, doesn’t it?
I’m asking the group if they feel that this is normal or seems slow.
Thanks in advance for your opinion.
IMHO…Unacceptable length of time.
Have used AV Free for quite awhile now and have found Avast extremely territorial when it comes to PC processing…nothing functions normally until AVAST finishes doing its thing. 8)
Personally you are wasting your time with a thorough scan with archives.
Thorough is also by its design very thorough (it scans all files) and perhaps a little overkill for routine use, were a Standard scan without archives should be adequate. Archive (zip, rar, etc.) files are by their nature are inert, you need to extract the files and then you have to run them to be a threat. Long before that happens avast’s Standard Shield should have scanned them and before an executable is run that is scanned.
I have only ever done a Through Scan with Archives once shortly after installation just to ensure a clean start state, but with XP for example avast will do a boot-time scan after installation if you select it, this I believe will be quicker and reasonably effective. Like everything in life things are a compromise.
Secondly why are you still using avast 4.8 as avast 5.0 has been out almost 8 months ?
The only reason would be if your OS isn’t supported, e.g. still using win9.x or winME.
You say that you have been using AV free, for quite a while now, but you don’t say how long, what version that is the current avast version has a slightly different (4.8 home / free 5.0). You also don’t say what type of scan you are doing.
Neither of you mention anything about your system specs, e.g. OS, RAM, CPU and that contributes greatly to scan duration, not to mention what other applications you have running at the time.
Switch to avast 5.0 free the scan takes 5 mins for a full scan of my computer just enable persistent cache it rocks!
Fair enough, and I considered that. I’ll turn that off and check it out.
Because I read of some issues with XP in these forums and decided to wait like someone else, for 5.1. If you’re telling me that it is not an issue and is stable and reliable, then I may consider installing it. But that’s the reason I hadn’t installed it.
That said, it sounds as if you are saying that the 18.5 hours on 217 gigs is NOT excessive when Archive Scan turned on. Can you confirm that’s what you’re saying?
Running XP Home, 2.8 GHz CPU, 1 gig RAM. As far as applications running, only what’s in the system tray - nothing unusal. Although Avast did lock up on a folder in the C:\RECYCLER folder, requiring a three finger salute to kill the Avast process and a reboot. I ran AVAST in safe mode and it finally completed. Again after 18.5 hours. (shrug)
If you read other people’s sig’s at the bottom of there post’s you will see how many are using avast 5.0.594 on xp machine’s with no problem at all,mine is windows 7 but iv put it on my father’s xp and is never faulted.
Don’t loose sight of the fact that this is a support forum and those without problems (for whatever reason) aren’t beating the door down to tell us.
I have XP Pro SP3 as do many others in this forum who aren’t suffering any problems. At some point you have to make the move as come the end of this year support for 4.8 is likely to be ended. Avast5 is better on the use of resources than 4.8, not to mention its scanning is faster and its protection better as it has routines not available in avast 4.8.
I totally get that David, but all I was asking was whether or not that scan time with 217 Gigs is considered excessive or normal. If it isn’t normal, I have to look into some other things, because it hasn’t always been this way.
No one can say as there is no such thing as a standard scan duration as all system specs, scan settings, other applications running, etc. will all effect scan duration.
You say 217GB, but is that what avast reported as being scanned or what you have on the HDD as the two will be greatly different when you include archives in the scan as they are unpacked first and then the contents scanned.
Those numbers are from the summary screen of the Avast User Interface. In other words, it’s what Avast reported as being scanned.
depends what sort of archive you got…how big they are, how many there are… Now when I was running 4.8 I’ve been running full scans with the same CPU as your, a P4 2.8GHz and same amount of RAM, 1GB, and also archive scanning on. Never saw that, 18 hours is completely mad. There’s something wrong with your setup. Uninstall and re-install 4.8, or better, switch to 5.0 (uninstall 4.8 first, the 5.0 installer can take care of this but it’s safer to do it manually, reboot, and install 5.0).
Thank you. Finally, an answer. That’s what I was trying to discern.
Peace,
Okay, I took the advice and installed Avast Free 5. It is still hanging and taking an extrememly long time to scan. In fact, it now looks frozen. Here are two screen shots showing the user interface, the percent complete, the file being scanned and the time it has taken. Clearly, this time it’s stuck on one file.
Any advice?
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1R5VwjoWnO2RHORtH91MMOx55RrSo0
http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?picture=1Z0LNe7T1bp6Dbz8IDa5wwTEDlsMC
the file you’re seeing isn’t the file being scanned but the last scanned file…ok in this case it doesn’t matter as avast is likely to find just other small files on zone alarm program file folder (yeah, the scan could have been stuck on a big file). So either there’s something wrong with your partition (corruption) but don’t think so…I would tend to think that Avast is anyway conflicting with Zone alarm…ZA has a history of conflicting with most security software, and is not a good firewall anymore btw, for ages. But let’s forget this for now >>> ZA might have some protection that prevents Avast from scanning its own files…weird is that Avast doesn’t just skip these files though…and whatever conflict there is between ZA and Avast, it’s not related to the fact that the scan gets stuck precisely on ZA files.
Don’t know what to tell you, I would definitely get hold of another firewall if I was you.
There have been some issues with zone alarm in the past. One of these problems relates to the tracking.log file located in the c:\system volume information folder/s (more than one if you have more than one partition). By excluding this file from on-demand scans seems to break this issue with ZA and the tracking.log file, see below.
Try adding that exclusion and see if that works by doing another scan.
Well David, that seems to have done the trick. Scan time was just under an hour and AshQuick works fine too. What’s interesting is that I have a friend with Zone Alarm and Avast 4.x free, and they didn’t have this problem. In any event, it looks solved. Thanks
You’re welcome.
I have seen this in avast 4.8 with ZA also, there just doesn’t seem to be any consistency in if it will impact on scans or not. But this does seem to resolve it in many cases where ZA is installed and there are scan freezes/slowness.