I check the forum for answers but have not found a Straight answer. My question is when i do a Through Scan with Archives about two days ago it took more than 3 hours or so to be done :o. Not even NAV took that long. Its it userful or good idea to scan Archives files? and why?
Of course the time for the scan will depend upon how many files (size) that you have on your computer, your OS and computer speed.
I have found that with 9 GIG of files scanning will increase in time by about 5 times if I scan archived files. Without scanning archived files scanning will take around 40-45 minutes. With scanning archived files 2½-3 hours.
Archived files are sometimes password protected as well, which won’t be scanned anway as a result.
Btw, I usually DO NOT scan archived files. Maybe once every 4 months or so.
As far as whether it is a good idea to scan archived files as to whether or not they are vulnerable to viruses, that I’m not sure. I would guess that they are not as vulnerable for the one reason that they are not actively used, otherwise I’m not sure.
avast! on demand scanning is not the fast one for sure.
Anyway, you can use the screen saver on-demand scanning.
When I first installed avast I did a thorough scan including archives and yes it can take a long time (it is very thorough, the duration does depend on your system specs and amount of data being scanned).
However now I do a weekly Standard scan no archives as a part of my regular system maintenance. Archive files are inert until you extract the contents and run/execute the file/s inside. avast’s resident Standard Shield scanner will pre scan these files when you attempt to do this, so my view is that regular scanning of archives isn’t really productive.
If I have any suspicions then I would do a thorough scan with archives included otherwise I tend not to scan archives.
Ok thanks guys.