Need Help! Scan Taking 6 Hours

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Ok I will start with a little information of the troubles I have been having.

It started about a month ago. I had to reformat and reinstall XP I was having trouble with my system. What happened was I lost my dialup connection. By this I mean one day I had my dialup working the next I was unable to locate it. I went to my connection wizard to setup my dialup again but the option to select dialup was shaded out. I could not do a dialup connection. So then I went to my admin tools to see what was wrong. I could not start my auto connection manager or remote conection manager (something like that)

Anyway I called up Dell they got me to reformat again and do some other things and I was able to connect. I had Norton at the time but did not like the way it worked. So I installed eTrust. eTrust told me I had a Trojan. So to verify this I went to an online scan and it said I had nothing, I went to a few more after that and they all said I was fine. So I went back to my eTrust and I was not able to delete the Trojan. I went to another site to do a search on the name of the Trogan and it came back that there was nothing by that name. So I did an even further search and still nothing. So I figured it was this eTrust thing giving me wrong info. I uninstalled it and got AVG. I did a scan and nothing came back, by now I was very frustrated, everything I did came back fine. Accept eTrust, I knew my system was running bad but there was nothing supporting my claim.

Well I have since moved to an area where I could get high speed (through cable) I had that connected yesterday and I asked the Tech what kind of AV he uses and he told me Avast! He said he would not use anything else. So I downloaded it and set it up and as I was winding down for the evening and doing my nightly scanning before bed, ie ad-aware and spybot. Well while I was doing ad-aware, Avast! came up saying I had a trogan. AHA I said, I knew something was here. So I deleted the trojan and after ad-aware I ran Avast! well by this time it was 11pm. So I went off to bed and figured I will check Avast! when I get up.

Well I am up now it is just after 5am and Avast was still scanning. I did a thorough scan. Anyway it has since finished while typing this and the log said that there were 83 listed lines and out of that one was the trojan…Win32:Trojano-312 [Trj]…Not even the same Trojan eTrust said I had. It said it was successfully deleted, But all the other lines said Unable to scan Archive is password protected. I know windows may have something to do with that since it is an archive. Am I correct?

So my question is Why did it take so long to do a scan? But yet when I look it says “Run-time of last scan 1:30:57” At first I thought it was my husband who may have restarted the scan when he got up. I don’t know maybe there was something that came up overnight and he did a rescan. But he was up at 4:30 so this would not match the time. Besides he leaves all the computer stuff for me. He is not much for computers.

Sorry this is getting so long but I want to add that I did do a Highjackthis and I went to an online HJT analizer and 3 things said it was a possible threat. Two were an activex and one was my internet providers webpage. The activex ones did not have dialer, free casino etc in them so I am assuming that is from online games?

Anyhelp would be great.

2

Ok I just did a search on the trojan I mentioned above and another person had the same one but it kept coming back. Mostly only when running their ad-aware. Avast! would pop up saying there was a trojan.

This persons trojan was in the same place as mine. explorer.exe and temp files. Do you think I may have the same problem with not actually getting rid of it? He did scans after scans and it always kept coming back.

If you need I can give you the full path of where this thing was found (both locations)

3

If you suspect a malware, always provide the follwing:

  • What OS you are using (incl. service packs if you have them)
  • Version of Avast
  • vps version
  • name of the infected file + its location
  • as what the infection is detected.
  • What you have tried sofar to get rit of it (or nothing if you want to see our answer[s] 1st)
  • any other related details.

There is no need to tell your entire life here ;D Just ask what you want to know/state the problem with the details. That’s all. If we want/need to know more we will let you know.

Now back to your problem.

  • Temp folders can always be emptied without causing damage to the OS. So if you have malware there, just empty the folder.

  • explorer.exe can be legitimate but als malware, a good clue is the location

  • explorer.exe (legitimate one) can also be infected.

  • The time a scan takes depends on a lot of things. cpu, ram, running services/applications, speed of your drive, fragmentation of the drive etc etc etc. So there is no way to tell if a scan is long or short without physically examining the system and do some pretty complicated maths.

  • Never trust the Dell helpdesk. From what you told us a format wasn’t needed at that time.

  • I created a HijackThis log analyzer (can be found on the page in my signature) It is, just as that website (hijackthis.de?) not perfect, but can be helpfull.

Did I forget anything? :smiley:

4

Thanks for your reply. I am sorry but when I first posted this I did not notice the other forum for Viruses so I posted again there. With more detail. (I think :slight_smile: )

PS~ Sorry about the life story thing but I have been on other sites and they always ask for a life story… so I guess I just got used to it. I will stop here tho.