Upon scanning AVAST creates these files:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Impostazioni locali\Temp_avast4_\unp35430682.tmp - 118.637 KB
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Impostazioni locali\Temp_avast4_\unp234548821.tmp - 118.638 KB
I guess they are made during the unpacking of the Thunderbird mailboxes.
Problem is they are not removed when the scanning is interrupted.
Can you delete it? if no than try this steps
Thats a quite huge files on your temp :o. Can you try run any cleaner that you have?e.g http://www.ccleaner.com/ or you can run it by going(Im using window XP but im not sure if yours is same as me) START>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>Disk Cleanup
if you still see the files than you download an unlocker or go here for more information http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/#download
Im not sure if i did it the right way but hope there is someone who can help you the better on your problem than using my ways.
What im helping here is to help you to delete the file.
Thanks for your help but you haven’t got the point. 
Those files are created “dinamically” by AVAST when you are scanning mailboxes, which are seen as “archives” actually.
I guess AVAST creates those files in order to look inside the archive and they are huge because the mailbox itself is huge.
Note: AVAST should either skip the mailboxes or have an option for it because scanning those huge archives is demanding and useless once the incoming mail is already scanned by the TSR provider.
Then AVAST should remove the temporary files when the scanning is done, and so it does, UNLESS you stop the scanning before it comes to the end.
In that case the files are left in the “avast” folder and that is not good.
Yes, I can manually remove the files but it would be better if AVAST took care of it upon stopping the scanner.
I guess I am not the only one with those leftovers in the HD.
avast! normally removes the temporary files even when the scan is interrupted… must be some very time-consuming operation going on here.
What exactly are you scanning?
you haven't got the point.Sorry for not understanding your problem.
avast! normally removes the temporary files even when the scan is interrupted...
Yea my avast4 folder was empty even i did/interrupt a scan.
I don’t do anything special, I either run the “standard scan” on C: or the “scan” via Explorer extension (don’t know if they are exactly the same).
I haven’t seen what happens with the AVAST screen server scanning enabled.
At some point of the scanning AVAST meets my Thunderbird mailboxes, that are inside a “mail” folder of about 170MB. Not that big considering mail archives can be easily some Giga large.
It happened to me to stop the scanner and then I got those files in the “avast” , that apparently aren’t removed upon scanner stopping.
The first time I manually removed the files thinking of a glitch but I can reproduce the same behaviour any time so I thought to post it here.
I don’t have any problem in manually removing the files. If I leave the files in place, AVAST creates other files the next scanning passage and removes them when it finishes, leaving the “leftovers” there.
Oh, of course I don’t remember what is in the mailboxes, I don’t know if it could be a particular attachment or something. I remove all the spam anyway and the mailboxes should be “clean” of viruses.
On a side note, sorry for repeating, the scanning of mailboxes should be only optional. I don’t see any point in scanning them each time.
To work around the issue I’ve set in “exclusions” this path:
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Dati applicazioni\Thunderbird\Profiles\mc135pum.default\Mail*
It is something that should be addressed in a smarter way then, first because not all users are able to work around, then because, even if I know my PC is slow (PIII 500), it doens’t sound that good AVAST put on its knees by a mailbox about 120MB large…
Try to enable the creation of the report file in avast! settings and let everything, even “OK files”, be included there. Then, scan the mail folder again.
I’d like to know what’s found there - because there wouldn’t be any temporary files for ordinary scanning, it must be some “archive extraction”. Maybe the MIME unpacker is seeing the mailbox as one message and a big attachment, don’t know…
Ok, I’ve got the report file, what should I do with it?
BTW there’s nothing in it, here is the block of one of the mailboxes, the largest, the others are identical:
(I’ve shortened the path to \mail)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox\PartNo_0#599384397\PartNo_0#38486210\PartNo_0#3100651197 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox\PartNo_0#599384397\PartNo_0#38486210\PartNo_1#3325552817 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox\PartNo_0#599384397\PartNo_0#38486210 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox\PartNo_0#599384397 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Templates [+] is OK
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\msgFilterRules.dat [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\popstate.dat [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Inbox.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Trash\PartNo_0#3517757697 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Trash\PartNo_1#2142653006 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Trash [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Trash.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Drafts [+] is OK
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Drafts.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Junk [+] is OK
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Junk.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Templates.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Sent\PartNo_0#1731396481 [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Sent [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
\Mail\pop.gmail.com\Sent.msf [E] File was skipped because of scanner settings. (42016)
Now tell me AVAST creates the huge temporary files only to skip content
The problem here is, in part, Thunderbird itself.
Thunderbird mail files have name likes “Inbox” and “Sent”. They have no file types on mail folders at all. Thunderbird mail files are huge long text files containing all the messages in clear text concatenated one message after the other. They look to avast as though each folder is one long .eml file. So avast can, at least it has only ever been able so far, scan the very first message in each Thunderbird mail folder only.
The problem is that avast does not know that these files are Thunderbird mail files it has standard way of detecting them as such.
avast has been scanning my Thunderbird mail folders for years and I have some Thunderbird archive folders very much larger than yours. However in recent times I have arranged my Thunderbird settings so that the archive files are held in a different folder that I exclude from scanning by avast - because it saves time in the scan and because avast does not understand them anyway.
I have not seen the problem of large temporary files being left around by avast but I do not usually interrupt my scans either.
I have just removed the exclusion and had the current version of avast scan my large Thunderbird archives. It scanned them (1.8Gb of them) and it did complain - in the report - about one part being too large to scan, otherwise it completed without leaving any temporary files around.
I suspect that any abnormal termination of the avast scan might well leave one or more temporary files around that will not get cleaned up.
I am not sure what is happening with your exclusion setting. I just tried the same setting om my system and here is part of the report:
As in your case I have shortened the path information.
Profiles\default.4p3\key3.db [+] is OK Profiles\default.4p3\localstore.rdf [+] is OK Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Gmail1 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Hotmail1 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Hotmail2 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Hotmail3 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\hotmail3-1 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Local Folders [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\localhost [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\mail.comcast-1.net [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\mail.comcast-2.net [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\mail.comcast.net [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\MSN [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\pop.gmail-1.com [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Yahoo1 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\Mail\Yahoo2 [E] Skipped due to exclusions settings. (42019) Profiles\default.4p3\mailViews.dat [+] is OK
Well, as I said - the MIME unpacker is trying to extract something from the mailboxes here (it’s the PartNo_* lines; maybe it misunderstood the structure of appended e-mails, somehow). I guess the resulting “extracted” files are rather huge… but I’m afraid it’s hard to say much more without seeing the actual files (mailboxes) :-\
In further checking …
I am suspecting that your exclusion setting may end “Mail\ *” with a space before the asterisk. If I have that setting my results look similar to yours.
@alanrf: if you are referring to me, I don’t have any problem with exclusions, thunderbird mail is not scanned now. Like I said in the first post, I wanted to point out that if I cancel the scanning using the proper button before it ends (both standard and explorer extension) big temporary files are left in the avast folder.
No other issues, besides the scanning being obviously slow when scanning the mail.
@igor: yes, I understand the mechanics of the thing. But see:
LorenzoC
my posts were directed to you. Igor is familiar with the format of Thunderbird files … he and I have discussed them a number of times over the years in this forum.
I was explaining to you that I have very much larger files in my Thunderbird and I have had since before I started using avast. Everyone of the folks I support using avast also use Thunderbird. None of us are experiencing any problems with avast scanning Thunderbird files - nor are we seeing any significant complaints from other users about avast and Thunderbird.
I don't have any problem with exclusions, thunderbird mail is not scanned now.
The post of your avast report shows that clearly it is still being scanned.
It seems likely you do have a problem with your exclusion setting. I used the exclusion setting correctly and it produced the results I posted showing avast skipping the avast folders completely.
4. If AVAST opens the mailboxes only to skip the content that is a joke.
If there is a joke … then it is not by avast and certainly not appearing on my system. As I clearly posted … that does not occur with the exclusions set properly.
If the exclusion is not entered properly, as I also described, then I get results from the avast scan very similar to the report you posted.
Compacted just means that the deleted mails have been removed from the folder. I do notice that you do seem to have a large trash folder - Thunderbird provides options to clear that out for you (and reduce avast scan time) - unless you deliberately need to keep the trash.
I guess I have to repeat again that avast does not understand the format of the mail folders of Thunderbird. It only can understand the first email message stored in the folder - the all the rest of the messages in the folder is just text to it and so scanning it is not valuable.
I have spent quite some time today in scanning my large Thunderbird files to try to reproduce the “left over files” that you experienced. I can see the large files being created but every attempt I have made to interrupt then I can see avast cleaning up the files before it terminates. I do not doubt that you experienced those files but reproducing the condition does not appear to be easy.
Uhm… let me explain:
I say it again: mail excluded, no more files left in avast.
Now you may wonder why I am posting here if my local issue is “solved”.
Simply because if I am having the issue it means other people can have it as well and IMHO it should be addressed.
I am happy you are not having the same issue but, you see, that is not particularly meaningful. Even if there were other 100 people who come here and say they aren’t having any problem with it, still it doens’t mean much.
I have a relatively small “mail” folder, the boxes are compacted, spam deleted, trash deleted, I’ve got only incoming and sent folders. In those folders there are my mail and some messages do have attachments. So what, can’t I receive attachments? Those attachment are relatively small documents and images, some zipped, not a whole DVD content.
About skipping files, as I said above it would be much smarter to NOT scan MBOX files at all instead of decompressing, extracting, whatever it is done and then skip the contents. Incoming mail is already scanned, even if an attachement is executed the “standard shield” should stop it if infected. So it seems to me the scanning of the mailboxes is just a waste of resources/time. Expecially given the difficulties I am seeing.
Last thing: it is a little annoying when you are told between the lines that the issue you are reporting is not a flaw in the software but something wrong in you. Ok, I am not paying for AVAST but in the same time I am not payed to testing, bug finding, reporting and such.
I am seeing temp files more than 100MB left in avast.
I can reproduce the issue at will.
You say the issue doesn’t exist? Ok, fine.
I will say once more and then leave you to your belief.
You can disbelieve the clear information I posted that shows you an exclusion - correctly set - causes avast to skip the Thunderbird mail files - it does not unpack them; it does not scan them.
If you want to go on unpacking them - as your post above clearly shows you are - it is your system and your choice. avast gives you a way to stop that - I showed you the evidence above.
There is no such thing as a standard for an MBOX file - it is just a plain text file.
Ok, I am stupid
Now let people fill their disks with “avast4\unp*.tmp files”.
When somebody complains of it you tell them you aren’t having any problem.
Case closed.
On a side note, I may be stupid but it seemed obvious to me that when I was asked to generate the report file I DID NOT exclude the mailbox, otherwise I could not generate any report on it. The exclusion I set is on the whole “mail” folder so nothing is scanned inside. The files “skipped” are reported with NO EXCLUSION set (and NO blocker either). Otherwise I would not say it is a joke (the irony to generate huge temp file to skip their content) either suggest to exclude them as default.
a. no exclusion → scanning cancelled → temp files left
b. exclusion → no scanning → no temp files left
c. testing to generate the report → no exclusion → scanning completed → no temp files left → skipped contents (due to scanner settings) in the report.
My current status b.
That translates in “better if AVAST doesn’t see Thunderbird mailboxes”.
Edit: speaking of me being stupid, I find a little difficult to understand the idea of a software that can detect rootkits but can’t recognize a directory from a file (see blocker blocking directories because their names) or recognize a Thuderbird MBOX file.
I said:
I suspect that any abnormal termination of the avast scan might well leave one or more temporary files around that will not get cleaned up.
I do not doubt that you experienced those files but reproducing the condition does not appear to be easy.
I have not said that you did not experience this problem. I have not said that the problem does not exist.
The stopping the scans of the Thunderbird mail is a separate issue.
In the end I was simply trying to assist you to really stop scanning the Thunderbird files and asking you to take a look at the avast4.ini file in Programs File\Alwil Software\Avast4\Data.
When you look at the exclusion to avoid scanning the Thunderbird Mail accounts in the Mail folder then please make sure that the exclusion setting ends …\Mail* and that there is no space between the \ and the *. I believe you will find that if you then create a report of your avast scan the part_… files will not be created and no longer appear in the report.
Just some parting thoughts …
I think that you misunderstand. I was trying to recreate your problem because I support a bunch of people using Thunderbird and avast too. If you can have the problem then so could they, if I could recreate the problem it would help me and them should they ever experience the problem too.
I could probably point you to the post long ago where I said something very similar about avast being able to recognize a Thunderbird MBOX in this forum. I thought it would be easy … but then I remembered that it is just a plain text file of email messages and that those messages can be in every language on the planet.
I have actually written code to manipulate Thunderbird mail files for myself and I know it is a Thunderbird MBOX. I would hate to have to write the code to recognize a Thunderbird MBOX in every language possible - since there is nothing in it to say it is a Thunderbird MBOX. Thunderbird mail files do not need to have “Thunderbird” in their folder names anywhere either if you care to use the settings available in the Thunderbird client.