I Need Help!! I have an 80 Gb hard drive. I have only used 14 Gb so far. According to my computer I have about 61 Gb free. BUT, when scanning with Avast this morning, it scanned almost 400,000 files using 34 Gb of space. In other words, the report said 34 Gb worth of files were scanned. I haven’t used 34 Gb. What has happened. Two days ago it scanned only 180,000 files and 20 Gb, but of course I didn’t have 20 Gb used up. What do I do.
This can be correct if you have enabled archive scanning, I think.
:-\I thought that may be the difference too, but Avast comes back with a list of archive files it was unable to scan saying they are password protected. I don’t have my archive files password protected. Anyway, that wouldn’t be 34 GB worth of space even with those. Don’t know what to do. Do I have a virus growing in here and it’s not being caught or something? Just don’t know what to do. Thanks for your help.
Avast comes back with a list of archive files it was unable to scan saying they are password protected. I don't have my archive files password protected.Java and some other aplications (eg Spybot s&d, Ad-Aware) are protecting certain files which is causing this.
KMC,
Try this: Disable the Archive scanning of Avast, and make sure the Scan sensitivity is at “mid range” for now.
Some system files are automatically “protected” and you will not be able to access them directly. As Eddy stated, some Spybot and Adaware files come up as “unable to scan”. Not to worry.
See if the total number of files decreases significantly with the above instruction. If not, then try a simple “repair”. Use Control Panel/Add-Remove/
Avast…find and click on the option to repair.
Then try again.
Let me know.
Happy Holiday. 
It’s a normal behavior. Don’t worry.
Oh, maybe you can clean (delete) the temporary files under C:\Windows\Temp 
Come to think of it, A Defrag and Discscan has also improved my scan time.
Give that a try also.
Yes, I keep defraged regularily with Diskeeper. I scan disc (or Error check in XP) regularily. Now, this is what I did. I disabled archive scanning and set to Medium scanning. When virus scanning completed, Avast scanned 14.6 GB, a little over what I actually have used. BUT, still wonder why it scanned 34 GB or so and well over 300,000 files the first time with archive enabled using the thorough scan feature. That still confuses me. How could it have scanned what I don’t have.
Forgot to mention in last post that I keep temporary and temp files cleaned out…along with cookies regularily.
I also went ahead and repaired Avast using Add/Remove program. Maybe that will help. But still am confused as to how it got that huge number of files to begin with.
I got similar results with archive scanning selected.
I think the reason is that Avast! unpacks each archive file (most of which are compressed - zip and cab files etc) temporarily and scans all of the files in the archive. So it is including in the end of scan report the sum of all the files inside the archive files and the unpacked space they occupy.
alan is essentially correct. With Archives enabled and sensitivity set to HIGH, Avast scans just about everything.
If you also have the Boot scan set to start on Startup, then more files are added.
The thing to watch is “Does the number of files scanned decrease on a subsequent scan attempt?”.
The amount of files scanned NOW is about right. Run a few scans and then set Avast back to Archives and High.
You mentioned “…the first time”. Avast can a bit long when first used until it “settles down”.
I want to thank everyone who replied to my post. All of you have helped me greatly. I appreciate your fast replies and all of your help.