My computer tech/geek installed Avast on my computer, taking off Norton. However, I just read this when researching Avast online: “Avast has changed its “Full Scan”. Now you are not allowed to actually “Scan all files” My system has a good 300k files + and Avast scans 64k of them.”
The next person in the forum said this: “The above poster is correct. Using the ‘custom scan’ option, on the next dialog, there is a checkbox for “scan all files”. Very simple.”
I’ve tried to create a “custom scan” but the files are all read only. How do I access it? Thanks.
Personally I think you are wasting your time scanning ‘all files.’ The whole point of having resident protection is to scan files that are a) present an immediate risk if infected and run, b) they are the target of infection, so these should be scanned on being created, modified, opened or run.
This depreciates the value of an on-demand scan for all intents an purposes the greatest majority of files on your system are inert, those that aren’t are going to be scanned by the resident on-access scanner if they present a risk.
That aside:
The fact that a file is read only shouldn’t stop it from being scanned, there has to be something else in the mix. So please give some common examples of the file name and locations of these read only files ?
There is a very good reason for having the Pre-defined scans as these really are scanning files that present a risk or are the target of malware, so avast is scanning in order of importance in the Quick scan and then expanding to the most important and a lower level of risk. This provides a good balance or protection Vs performance.
Personally I schedule a Quick scan weekly and a Full scan monthly and that is fine for me, so it rather depends on your risk aversion.