Some Files Could Not Be Scanned

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hi,

Had a problem tonight for the 1st time with Comodo blocking sf.bin during a scan & then, during a scan I received the following a message that “Some Files Could Not be Scanned”.

See attached screen shot…

Any idea what’s going on & why this is suddenly happening? Thanks!

2
  • Nothing to worry about, those are old virus definitions folders and avast is doing some housecleaning to keep the size used on the hard disk to a minimum. This just happens to have occurred between the time you started the scan and it reaching that old defs folder.
3

This is the third day in a row this has happened to me. Will this happen now every time avast does a full system scan? Is there anything I can do to correct it and not have it pop-up with this message everyday?

4

Well honestly I don’t think there is any thing to do if you know the cause and that it isn’t a problem.

The other thing if it has happened for the third day in a row, it means you are running an on-demand scan every day, which on a resident on-access antivirus is a much depreciated requirement.

For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that are otherwise dormant or inert as the resident on-access scanner will scan files that present an immediate risk, or are a target of infection when they are created, modified, opened or run.

I run a weekly scheduled Quick scan on default settings and a monthly scheduled Full System Scan and I have only come across this once.

Obviously it is your system and your choice on what scans you feel need to be run.

5

How come this is just now happening? I have been running a full system scan every night for the past year and this is the first time I am seeing these ‘error messages’. What has changed in the past 3 days for avast to now act like this?

6

DavidR,

Thanks for the reply.

I, like DVM, am wondering why this is suddenly happening, along with the sf.bin issue.

Others are suddenly experiencing issues between their firewalls & sf.bin, as am I & I never had this “Some Files Could Not Be Scanned” problem until yesterday. And although this may be a benign issue, something doesn’t seem right.

You said,

This just happens to have occurred between the time you started the scan and it reaching that old defs folder
which may be true in my case, time will tell, but DVM has been experiencing the problem for 3 days so, at least in his case, this would not seem to be the case.

Any thought as to a possible fix for all of this in the new update or a way to remedy the problem?

7

It may be related to this

Spring cleaning in our virus database
http://blog.avast.com/2010/09/06/spring-cleaning-in-our-virus-database/

8

I rather doubt it has anything to do with the spring clean as that is the physical size of the database, nothing to do with how it is stored on a user system.

@ DVM & Bub12,
As an avast user I honestly don’t know why it happens for some people but not for everyone.

Some factors are a) the time you have the scheduled scan set to run, b) the actual scan you are running and c) if you have made any changes to the pre-defined scan (quick and full system) default settings.

It may also be avast if it hasn’t already done the housekeeping before you initiate the scheduled scan that triggers the cleaning process to save time on the scan duration.

The above however, is speculation on my part as I simply don’t have that in depth knowledge as an avast user and not an avast developer.