Hi! A young man recently updated my computer and in doing so he got rid of my old anti-virus program and installed the free Avast version – he told me I don’t have to worry about ever doing anything with it. I do notice that updates happen automatically, but I’m concerned about scanning for existing problems; I’ve tried it a couple of times and it runs and then just goes away. Is that good? As in, no problems? I can’t seem to find any kind of report or anything like that. Sorry for my ignorance and appreciate any help. Thanks!
Vickie
No, it should display the report…
How are you starting the program (the scanning, I mean)?
Which was your old antivirus? Did you fully uninstall it?
Welcome to avast! 8)
How are you running your scans?
There should be a results page displayed after an on-demand scan, but if you are using the right click context menu scan or the ashQuick.exe to scan downloaded files then you won’t see a result unless you tick the Show Results of Explorer Extension in the program settings, common, see image.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/for-dwr/showextensionresult.jpg
Hello and thanks for the answers. I was trying to do everything by right-clicking the icon in the task tray. I ran the scan successfully by going from Start/All Programs…etc. No problems were found although there was quite a list of items that couldn’t be scanned. Not sure what that’s about. Thanks again for helping!!
Vickie
No problem, welcome to the forums.
avast lets you know why things aren’t/can’t be scanned, you will probably have to expand the columns. Hover the mouse between the column headings until you see the pointer change to something like this <-|->, then hold the left mouse button whilst dragging the symbol to the right.
Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons such as AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy, there are others.
When you run scans with the above programs and you delete harmful entries that they detect, a copy is kept (in quarantine/restore/backup) in case you need to reverse what you did. These are usually password protected, you should do some housekeeping and delete old backup/recovery/quarantine entries (older than two weeks or so), this will reduce the numbers of files that can’t be scanned.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to.
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.