I just installed Avast and am running my first thorough scan on a dual core intel machine (HP dv9000 series laptop). It’s been running for about 2 hours so far and says it’s scanned 8% of the files. I’m also running it on an older machine that’s so far scanned 3% of the files in about 3 hours.
Machine 1 (newer):
HP Pavillion dv9072ea
Windows XP Media Center Edition Service Pack 3 (build 2600
I gave up on the “thorough” scan yesterday, and have just completed a “standard” scan in 1 hr., 24 min.
I would however, like to complete at least one thorough scan including archive files (if I can figure out how to enable).
At the current speed and resource use, that’s impossible. Not just impractical, impossible. It gets part way through the scan, est. time maybe a full 24 hour day or so, overheats my system and it shuts down. If I let it cool and restart, it starts at the beginning again - so there’s no way to complete a thorough scan.
Hi rogerfgay.
I see this is the fifth (or thereabouts) thread you’ve brought this issue up, on.
It’s better to post in just one thread - your own - and not start other threads that are similar, because this way any help you get will be more focussed, and anyone trying to help will have the “full picture”, so to speak, rather than fragments.
Either this thread, or “save partial scan” would probably be most appropriate.
I’m not an expert (you don’t have to be expert to be an evangelist), but I am here, now.
Your specs shouldn’t be a problem, and the laptop should not be overheating, even at a high load.
You do have a lot of data to scan, but it shouldn’t be “stalling” at 8%.
Some questions:
–what other applications are active at startup, and during the scan, particularly security software?
–what AV was installed on the laptop prior to Avast?
–how long since you performed a disk cleanup, and a defrag?
–how long since you’ve had the dust blown out from the internals, and are all the vents unobstructed?
–what is the full name (including the path) of the file that the scan appears to “stop” on?
Just for comparison.
Test Machine. Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz, 1GB memory, XP-Home SP3, all updates. 2 x 160GB Sata Drives, each 2 x 80GB partitions all NTFS format. Avast 4.8.1229 - VPS 09/08/2008, Zone Alarm 7.0.483.000, Spybot 1.6.0.30 with Teatimer 1.6.1.22
For test scans used D: partition (used for data storage). 39.8GB used 34.90GB free.
First scan - Archives not scanned. Total Time 6 minutes 54 seconds - total 38.3GB of files scanned
Second scan - Archives scanned also - Total time 22 min 33 seconds - total 56.9GB of files scanned.
Both scans (Standard) done with computer in normal running mode except Spybot Teatimer turned off.
Note. You can select to scan each partition on its own, or any group of folders you choose by scanning using the folders option from the Simple User Interface. The interface also gives you the option of selecting or not selecting to scan archive files.
Here might be some partial good news - not sure exactly. I tried a free version of BitDefender after their online scan crashed my system yesterday. (Windows recovered using chkdsk. For today’s run, I just crossed my fingers and imagined that it found and deleted something terrible in a sensitive place. It didn’t crash this time.)
Anyways - BitDefender completed the initial scan, that kicked off as part of installation, in 22 min. compared to the 1 hr. 24 min. I had for Avast! But checking the settings for BitDefender, it was on fast scan. Although I don’t know exactly how that stacks up with Avast! “standard”, but I could see from the detailed checklist, that BitDefender wasn’t checking so much. Also - here’s the big finale, it only checked my C drive. Avast! had checked both C and D - twice as much data.
Anyway, maybe that’s not news at all. I understand there are benchmark comparisons out there on the web done by the usual suspects. Avast! isn’t the fastest. But at the price, I’d settle for good.
You can also select the Quick scan (the anti-rootkit scan doesn’t get executed with this scan though), this would possibly be closer to the bitdefender, Fast scan, though as you point out avast doesn’t just scan the C drive.
Thanks for posting the image of the explanations for the three scanning types. Although I’m still too much of a novice to say anything definitive about comparisons with other software that explain their levels different - that does help me understand what I’m doing with Avast! I hadn’t found that documentation myself yet.
So anyways - I guess I’ve done something quite significant by completing a Standard scan for both disks - although at the time, I still hadn’t turned on archive files. That sort of matters but maybe not. Most of the files that were caught in the scan were just really old stuff - and I used it as a pointer to old things that should be removed from my system anyway, and removed whole applications, outdated versions of Java, old data, etc. If the trend holds in archive files - and that’s a reasonable suspicion - it’s stuff that I’d never access anyway - and hopefully I’ve already removed when I deleted stuff.
D drive is recent data and didn’t have any problems.
Thorough checks all files for all virus types - not being an expert - seems like the other two explanations are saying it’s unlikely to find anything that Standard wouldn’t. ???
Hi.
I have a little problem, we have a Linux Server with Red Hat Enterprise 5, our firewall is iptables, when I try to update Avast in Windows Xp, Don´t find the server, but when the service iptables is down the update run .
Please somebody helpme.
Thank to everyone.
Not exactly. Archive files are inert, closed into themselves. A virus inside an archive must be extracted to get active. So, archive scanning is not a huge necessity, you can stay with the standard scanning. But, maybe once each two months, you can let running a full scanning (archive included) to know if anything is “sleeping” inside your computer…
But … programs use components from archives (rar, etc.) all the time, extracting as needed without saving the extracted components to disk. Run time extraction is a feature in languages such as Java.
good thread rogerfgay
I learn something all the time
standard scanner will pick up the extractions from files and also extractions from archives and encrypted files which a standard scan from anyone will not find
Appears that our guess about BitDefender’s quick scan is right. Here’s the description from their documentation.
Deep System Scan
system’s security, such as viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits and others. Scans the entire system, except for archives. In the default configuration, it scans for all types of malware
Full System Scan
threatening your system’s security, such as viruses, spyware, adware, rootkits and others. Scans the Windows, Program Files and All Users folders. In the default configuration, it scans
Quick System Scan
for all types of malware, except for rootkits, but it does not scan memory, the registry or cookies.