I installed free earlier today and started running a Full Scan. This was about 12 hours ago and it is 0% complete. I can see it is scanning files and it has found something. Is this normal? What should I do?
Whilst a first scan after a clean install (?) would be slower as it would have to build up the Persistent and Transient caches, but 12hrs so far is exceptionally long.
That said we don’t have much to work with:
What avast version, 8.0.x or 9.0.2006 ?
Were the Full Scan settings as per the default or did you make some changes ?
What is your Operating System, CPU, RAM and the rough amount of data on the hard drives that you were scanning ?
Have you previously run this same scan with avast and if so how long did it take ?
Personally I would stop the scan, I also wouldn’t run a Full scan, but the Quick scan. Avast is a resident antivirus, so any active files are going to be scanned by avast when run. For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that might otherwise be dormant/inert. Going up to the Full scan just exaggerates this scanning of files that are likely to be dormant/inert.
I don’t really know. I downloaded it last night, so the current default version for a new install? I am running windows 7, but have no idea about RAM or anything. I am pretty sure I don’t have that much in the way of files, as I don’t have any music or photos on this computer. I restarted the computer and did a startup scan which found quite a few things (9 I think). I am trying to run it with the normal default settings, I will give it one more go. Thanks for your help.
I stopped it to start a quick scan about 5 minutes ago, it still says 0% complete. Is this normal? I did select all the paths…
Right click on the avast tray icon and click about avast!, it will give you the version details there.
Is this your first installation of avast ?
If so - Have (or did) you another Anti-Virus installed in this system, if so what was it and how did you get rid of it ?
It may take time to see the progress change as it initialises the scan and works out roughly how much data there is and how long it is likely to take to give any percentage. I just kicked off a Quick scan whilst compiling this post, the progress remained on 0% for about 30 seconds or less, but is working now.
Infected files: 0 Total files: 22045 Total folders: 5745 Total size: 7.2 GB
- Scan stopped: 01 November 2013 11:18:33
- Run-time was 3 minute(s), 3 second(s)
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So given your other Full scan 12 hrs and still zero % progress and this one, it most certainly isn’t normal and this is why the questions I asked before and in this post are crucial to even hazarding a guess as to why it is happening.
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Finding information:
If you open Control Panel - System, it will show the RAM that you have and the CPU.
As for the data that is likely to be scanned, open Windows Explorer and right click on the Drive letter/s (of the drive/partition you are going to scan) and select Properties, that will tell you how big the drive/partition is and how much data is on it.
I have the 9.0.2006 version of Avast and it is the first time I have installed any Avast software. I have AVG and Norton both still on the computer but I have never had Avast before. I have not got rid of either AVG or Norton (both of which are very annoying, telling me to pay money or something all the time) because I am not sure how to. I have 4GB of RAM (3.75GB usable). I could not see the CPU. I have 100GB to scan (I think).
General: Uninstalling a third-party antivirus software
Yes you certainly have to get rid of these other AVs, this is essentially the cause of the total bogging down of the scan.
For every file that is opened to be scanned, guess what, it causes one of the other resident scanners to block the opening until it scans the file. This in turn may cause the third av to do exactly the same, lock that action until it has scanned it.
This at the very least can triple the scan duration, but these low level drivers can lock up the system as they fight for control - a bit like three dogs fighting over one bone.
Having two resident anti-virus scanners installed (three in your case) is one (two in your case) too many and not recommended as rather than provide twice the protection it can cause conflicts that could leave you more vulnerable.