for about a month now I have noticed that I get a notification about how a scan couldn’t scan some files after the scan is finished, I attached a picture of the files that couldn’t be scanned, and when I try and navigate to some of those locations I get the error message saying .
location is not available
is not accessible
access is denied.
Hi,
Just a quick heads-up re; your Folder Options.
I see that you have “Hide extensions for known file types”… [ √ ] checked.
This is dangerous.
Why?
Because if someone sends you an email or any type of file & it ends with .jpg/.pdf or .txt etc., etc.
& you open it…It may be an .exe/any kind of executable file, but you will not know because of that entry that you’ve left enabled by default.
Best to UN-check it.
Stay safe…
Sorry but your image although very large doesn’t give any information on ‘why’ the file/s can’t be scanned. What is strange about this is there isn’t any file names mentioned in the image only folder locations.
There are many legitimate reasons why a file/s can’t be scanned.
Here we go I fixed the image. Sorry about that.
I also attached an image showing what happens when I go I try and go to one of the locations listed.
Check the folder’s permissions.
Aside from what Mike23 said about the “Hide extensions for known file types” there are some other options that could have an impact.
My win7 system has ‘Always show menus’ I don’t know if this could have an impact here, as some of these folders listed in the images aren’t literal/physical locations, more like shortcuts or menus.
You also have ‘Hide protected operating system files’ enabled I don’t like hiding any files. But I’m unsure if that would have an impact in this case.
That said I can’t recall ever having seen just the folders listed in the File name column of the scan results. So this is a bit of a mystery to me.
The odd thing is it only started doing this in april, I have never seen this before.
I closed down all my programs I had open and reran the scan and this time. I only had one folder show up in the error log.
it was
c:\users\allusers
same error message, the system can’t find the path specified.
I really wish I knew what was causing this, I have made no changes to my computer in the last month except for windows updates.
Agreed, I really hate mysteries.
Running a 3rd scan with another program shut down, hopefully this helps solve the issue. if I don’t get the error message this time I think I can narrow down the cause. If I do then I have no bloody idea.
3rd scan finished and yet again, it still can’t find C:\users\allusers
but I guess as long as I am not picking up an infection it doesn’t matter.
still would love to know the cause though.
So would I as I have never had or seen an occurrence like this one before.
I have seen this before - what you see are links (e.g. C:\users\allusers is normally a link to C:\ProgramData, not a real folder).
I’d say your installation is somehow corrupted (or installed in some non-standard way) and those links actually point somewhere else (what I’ve seen was that they pointed to non-existent drives, e.g. E:\ProgramData). Avast tries to follow those links during scanning and arrives at some invalid location. (You can tell Avast not to follow links by unchecking that option on the Sensitivity page of the particular scan - I’d say it helps).
You can verify the target of your link from cmd.exe - go to the parent folder (e.g. c:\users) and run “dir /al”
Thanks for the input Igor.
Thanks for the input igor, I will point out that I don’t have it set to check for links at all.
did you look for answer #4 ??
I get the same message about Avast could´nt scan certain files. This occured after I by misstake downloaded Windows 10 and somehow the installation failed. After that I get these messages about avast could not scan some files. I can see that the files it can´t scan is files that have something to do with windows 10. I saw that you downloaded files with windows update maybe there is a connection there ? This is just a thought have no idea if it´s relevant to your problem.