Is it normal that Avast takes ages to scan my computer?
I turned it on to do a thorough scan at about 12am.
It only finished the next day at about 8pm!!! :o
I’m sure something is not right and that it shouldn’t take so long!!!
Has this ever happened to any of you?
How long does it normally take?
not sure what happened though… ???
for my case…it takes about 1 hour for a thorough scan
You didn’t give us any info about your system. Or, how much data is on your system.
Was anything found as far as viruses and did it stop scanning on it’s own or did you finally interupt the process? ???
There was another thread where we’d compared typical “normal” scanning times.
On my system, set up to exclude a set of folders with just jpg’s, a thorough scan (reported as a little under 2-1/2 gigs) including archives takes about 11 minutes, and a standard scan (also including archives) about 8 minutes.
Please check off in Report section of settings, showing all files whose are currently scanned - and try to figure out what file makes your scanning so slow.
Thank you all for your answers.
It was a bit silly of me to ask without telling you what kind of computer I have :-[
So I have added some info in my signature. Wasn’t really sure what to write, so I hope I haven’t missed anything important. 
Yes it did find a problem when scanning, and I think it’s cleared up.
I defragmentated my PC yesterday. It took forever too. I put it on at midday and it still hadn’t finished by 1am. But it was in the morning :-X
So maybe Avast will be able to scan faster now 
if you want to scan with lighting speed try command on demand
http://www.commandondemand.com/eval/cod/index.cfm
an AMD K-6 processor is fairly old hence that could be one reason it is a little slow. Command should be a lot faster than avast however ths free version is only an on demand scanner ans is NO SUBSITUTE for avast
I would make sure at DMA is enabled for the hard disk drive.
RJARRRPCGP
In win XP the default is use DMA if available.
Sorry, what do you mean? DMA? ???
(by the way, half of my PC is in French and half in English, depending on the program. So thing can get complicated!)
That’s one way to stay fluid in two languages…
The reason is that I live in France but I’m English.
So windows is installed in French and some other programs, then some other stuff, like Avast for example is installed in English!
I understand both languages perfectly, but sometimes when looking for help with a program or something, it’s in a different language and takes a bit of time working out what I should do! 
lol, even if something is easy, you can trust me to make it a little more complicated!!! hahahha
For the DMA setting in french :
Démarrer->Paramètres->Panneau de configuration
Double click “Système” go to tab “Matériel”, click “Gestionnaire de périphériques…”
Click “+” for “Contrôleurs ATA/ATAPI IDE”
Double click “Canal IDE principal”, go to tab “Paramètres avancés”.
For the “Mode de transfert” field select “DMA si disponible” for the both “Périphérique 0” and “Périphérique 1”.
Click “Ok”.
Do the same settings for “Canal IDE secondaire”.
I am using windows 2000 but it should be the same for XP.
Good luck and bienvenue en France !!
Thank you Doc
So I’m not the only one in France on this forum!
You’re welcome ! Glad it helped you.
We all write in english on the forum so it’s hard to say ???
Maybe it would be a good idea to have a “country” field in the personal info.