Scan report says lasted few seconds when actually few hours

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I use Avast Pro, in Windows 7, SP1. When I do a full system scan, it has always lasted several hours.
It has always worked slowly but beautifully in prior program versions.
The scan logs always made sense and accurately listed the scan start time and the length of time it took to complete the scan. The scan log history was easily viewable.

Since the recent update to version 18.1.2326, the scans still take several hours but the scan history report shows that every scan is lasting only “a few seconds”.
And also it is deleting all history even though, in general settings, under “maintenance”, it is set as “delete scan logs older than 180 days”.

2

I am seeing the same thing on Win 10 Pro, Avast 18.2.2328. All scans listed as lasting “a few seconds”.

3

“A few seconds” is a graphical user interface wording that avast developers put in place to state a scan was made. No provision was made to provide the actual time a scan actually took, and the ‘few seconds’ tag is by design.

In other words, it is a GUI bug in that it fails to post the actual scanning time because the developers did not put that feature in. They took this feature out.

Why they did that is anyone’s guess.

4

Same situation here - Full Scan runs & reports 4:18 hours.

5

I believe this has been acknowledged by an Avast Team member in another topic.

I tested this using the Quick Scan and that too reported Run time: a few seconds not an actual time.

Aside from that the Quick Scan was positively glacial, nothing like the original Quick Scan which actually did take just a few seconds. Avast have made a pigs ear of the reintroduction of the Quick Scan it is anything but quick, reporting it took ‘a few seconds’ is a joke and a bad one at that.

I started off a Smart Scan to compare, only to find that after the latest program update, Sensitive Data Scan was added to the Smart Scan. This is bad considering, A) Sensitive Data protection is a paid option and B) I didn’t elect to install it. Just a bloody hook from marketing gremlins.

Anyway on with the Smart Scan comparison to the Quick Scan (I removed Sensitive Data protection option before running the smart scan):

  1. It completed much, much quicker than the Quick Scan.
  2. On successful completion, I checked the scan history only to find that the Smart Scan I had just run isn’t recorded.

Is it any wonder that I don’t bother with on-demand scans outside of testing.