How long for a 'thorough' scan?

system · 2007-07-28T04:58:23.000Z

I’m going on 9 hours now.

??? : ???

Thanks…

oldman960 · 2007-07-28T05:03:22.000Z

Well, I guess it depends on your system, how much data and what type of files. Is the file count changing?

alanrf · 2007-07-28T05:07:01.000Z

Let’s see … I have 5 drives online about 900Gb (not fully occupied) … just started a thorough scan of all all online disks. I will report back.

Oh … thorough scan … with archives

alanrf · 2007-07-28T05:39:28.000Z

The scan of my system just completed.

I will report back with a bit more information on space occupied etc.

So my scan took about 33 minutes. My system is a dual processor (2 X 2.8GHz) with 2Gb RAM.

A bit more detail … of my 900Gb about 460Gb is occupied.

But I want to be truthful and report that the majority of the time was (due to the exclusion list I have created in avast) spent on my C: drive.

My C: drive (internal SATA) has 18Gb occupancy. Of this 18Gb 2Gb is used by the hyberfil.sys (hibernation file of Windows and in my exclusion list) and another 8Gb is used by Goback (unfortunately now owned by Symantec) that allows me to revert my system to any point within 30 seconds or so within the last two weeks and allows me to understand a lot of what avast is up to - this is also in the avast exclusion list.

My second internal drive (SATA) has a partition that is scanned by avast but has only about 2Gb occupancy.

The other three drives are external USB. They are scanned by avast but contain mainly files that I have decided avast need not scan (they are in my exclusion list). They are mainly .jpg, .mp3, .flac, .avi, .mpg, .wmv, .tivo (files uploaded from my digital video recorder), .tib (Acronis True Image backup).

I could probably save even more time by preventing avast from scanning my Thunderbird archive folders - since avast does not understand them - but they are only about 500Mb in total.

So what’s the bottom line for me?

I’m probably being a bit unkind to avast in my estimates but it is taking avast about 30 minutes to scan about 10GB of data thoroughly including all the archive files on my system drive (it is probably rather more data if I counted the files on all the disks not in the exclusion list).

So, how much data have you got taking more than 9 hours?

system · 2007-08-01T16:35:14.000Z

I have less than 30GB of data, 60gb harddrive.
512MB memory.
AMD1794Mhz processor.
XP Home.
Again, this HP dv500 laptop was an efficient lil’ computer, til Avast.
Yet, the actual function of Avast seems really good.
Can it be something ‘as simple’ as needing more memory?
Thanks…

TedNelly · 2007-08-01T16:48:15.000Z

Did you have another AV program installed prior to Avast and if yes what was it?

DavidR · 2007-08-01T17:22:22.000Z

Based on your system information, I would say that 9 hours and still running is well over the top and something is wrong, I can only assume some other interaction (possibly as has been mentioned by (tednelly). What other security software do you have installed ?

I’m also remain to be convinced as to the need of a thorough scan with archives, other than for a first time to give a clean bill of health.

Archive (zip, 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. Thorough is also by its design very thorough and perhaps a little overkill for routine use, were a Standard scan without archives should be adequate.

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.

system · 2007-08-03T16:43:40.000Z

Just did a 310 gig scan (thourough + archived files) and it took me close to 2 hours… (tons of archived files tho… probably in the range of 100+ gig)

Rej

P.S. Darn, forgot to check the amount of files it checked… but I think it was close to the 2,000,000 mark (1.9 ish)

system · 2007-08-08T15:39:25.000Z

tednelly post:6:

Did you have another AV program installed prior to Avast and if yes what was it?

This computer had Symantec, which ran out, so I uninstalled it; then researched the ‘best’ free AV: avast.
I’ve had some funky probs ever since, unfortuately. see ‘broken, scratchy sound/video.’

Yeah, I did the archive thing just to have a baseline ‘clean bill of health.’

Thanks, all!

DavidR · 2007-08-08T15:52:15.000Z

By Symantec I assume you mean Norton AV ?

A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT

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