Initializing Engine Freezes

Hi,

I have been using avast for many months with no apparent problems.

I have avast set to scan while the screensaver is running, but now I am noticing that when ever the screensaver starts the avast window permanently states “initializing engine”. I.e. it is not scanning through all my files anymore.

Have you any ideas why this might be happening, I have not knowingly been playing with the settings at all to have caused this. ???

Thanks,
Rod.

Did avast screen saver module work in the past?

Which screen saver are you using?
Any other scanning program running in background?

Yes, its been working fine like that for last 10 months.

I’m just using the basic Windows XP saver and there are not any other scanning programs I’m aware of that are running.

How long have you waited? (before concluding that it’s frozen)

If I remember correctly, avast! browses the drive’s folders until the place it stopped the last time is found - and it resumes scanning from there. During this initial browsing, the “initializing” message is displayed. So, if you have lots of files/folders on your disk and stopped in a “wrong” place last time, it might take a while before the continuation is found. Or, maybe if the recent last folder was deleted…
I know, there are a few things to improve here :-[

Yeah…
Is it because of this that when a virus is found by the screen saver module and the Enhanced version send it to Chest automatically, every ‘next’ start of the screen saver module (at that session, I mean, until I boot the computer) will just shown the ‘last red infected file’ in the screen? ::slight_smile:

If the file is really moved to the Chest and deleted from the disk (which means it may not be locked - e.g. running), then it shouldn’t happen. The subsequent scans cannot find something that’s not there…
However, maybe the file was just marked to be deleted on the next reboot…

But isn’t the scanner looking for the ‘last’ scanned file and if the file is not there (because it was deleted or sent to Chest)… ::slight_smile:

If the file isn’t there, it certainly shouldn’t be reported as infected (the red window)…

Up untill recently it would begin scanning within seconds, always. Now even after 20 minutes it will still be stating "Initializing Engine ".

Strange. The text is written in blue, right? (i.e. not in red, as in the infection report)
Is there any (significant) disk activity when this message is shown?