Questions after running a scan

  1. My log showed many files which were ARCHIVED FILES which were “password protected” and thus could not be scanned (I presume). All of these files were part of software that is on my machine which I apparently have no control over. Am I right in assuming that these files cannot be scanned and if so, is there a way to avoid scanning these types of files.

  2. The log stated that 774,420 files were scanned and 6,958 folders. Run time 5:09:41. Total size scanned files: 20.2 GB.
    My questions here are I don’t think I have that many files and I certainly don’t have 20.2 GB of drive spaces. I only have a 10 GB hard drive on my system. How can these stats be accurate ?

  3. The log showed that the files were all scanned a second time. In other words the scan did [u]one pass[/b] and then logged all of the same files a second time thus presumably a second pass of all the same files which were “archive and Password protected files” (see above).

My question here is why were all of the files in the log listed one time and then listed all over again. A virus was found on the first pass (happened not long after scan started) does Avast run a second scan again if a virus is found ?

More info which might help: I had only ran one scan before this one and nothing turned up in the log, it took much less time and a virus was not found (the first time).

Thanks for the help :slight_smile:

There are in fact two exclusion lists: one in program settings, for the on-demand scanning.
And other in Standard Shield settings, for the on-access protection (residents).
Second, it’s necessary to put the complete mask to the exclusions, i.e. something like c:\program files\application*

Into this statistics are count the number and size of the packed files (archive files like .zip, .arj, .cab…).

Twice or repeated scanning shows that the user selected both Local disks and Folder selection and marked all the local disks (by their letters) again.

If you uncheck some log options, specially ‘ok files’ you can get a shorter log and a little faster scan.

  1. you can’t scan files that are password protected if you don’t know the password, also see below.
  2. if you have scanned archive/compressed files, the files compressed inside there are also scanned and counted. Double scanning as Tech mentioned may account for this, but my stats are broadly correct according to my HDD/data size.
  3. double scanning as Tech mentioned may account for this.

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.

okay i would not be alarmed, but this is second machine this has happened to and I really don’t want it to crash totally like the other. I ran scan right after I had a new tab pop up in Firefox and say I had 5 viruses not wanting me to close it unless I downloaded a file to protect my computer. This same happened with AVG on my other machine and in a day the computer crashed.

No infections, no corrupt files only 10 archive files unable to scan because password protection. I run regular scans and have not located these files before and that was same for avg (although these are not same file names yet they did start with recyclers then also)

I am not familiar with the files (10 0f them) that are unable to be scanned because of password…they all begin with

C:\RECYCLERS|1-5-21-746137067-1606902848-1060284298-1003\Dc240.exe\recourse.0000.pkg

then they all change (1)require_directx6.dat (2)trio_dxtest6.dat (3) \dxtest.exe (4)require_winxp.dat (5)require_diectx9.dat (6)trio_dxtest9.dat (7)dxtest90.exe (8) trio_dxtest9_butterffies.dat (9) dxtest90_butterffies.exe (10) restrict_64bit.dat

Any information would help

thank you