Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Chucky500 on May 21, 2012, 11:43:24 PM
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Downloaded and installed v7.0.1426 a couple of months ago on a W2K box, and it is generally fine. The only thing that bothers me is that upon most startups Avast (the red/yellow ball is rotating away continuously) is scanning the C: drive. The File System shield shows this. So far I have not been able to find the switch to turn this off. And I haven't found anything discussing it in the forum after looking through a couple of pages and doing a couple of searches. I'd prefer to not have this scan when I start up, and back in v6 I did not. The scan makes things a lot slower to get my other programs started up, and the drive is chattering away causing extra wear. I'd prefer to save this kind of scan for my weekly system work session.
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There is no startup scan - if the icon rotates, it means the shield is scanning something, but not by itself; the scanning is a result of something loading/accessing the files.
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On my w2k VM, v7 scans many system files every boot, which I did not see with v6. Maybe this is what OP says.
If I remember correctly, Persisitent-Cache does not work on w2k. Is this a cause, or　system-files whitelisting got changed in some ways?
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I'm on W2k using Opera and 7.0.1426 and have also noticed that the file system shield is constantly scanning system and program files - 19k+ file scans today alone. Through random viewing I'm beginning to wonder if it has developed a dislike to Java so I might try temporarily uninstalling that to see if it makes any difference. Hope this info helps for now and will update if java is the cause!
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It seems to scan the whole C drive (about 32K files) just about everytime. While caching to avoid repeat scans would be a nice thing, not at this cost! :(
I think NON's post describes the situation most accurately.
I unchecked "Use persistent caching" under File System Shield - Advanced. It is still scanning, about 20K files in, but I would expect this to take at least a restart of avast or even a reboot to tell if it changes the behavior. Tomorrow!
Also a little surprised that I didn't receive any email notification of replies to my posting. I thought I had that set.
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19k? LOL. My File system shield scanned 810 files for entire day.
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It seems to scan the whole C drive (about 32K files) just about everytime. While caching to avoid repeat scans would be a nice thing, not at this cost! :(
I think NON's post describes the situation most accurately.
I unchecked "Use persistent caching" under File System Shield - Advanced. It is still scanning, about 20K files in, but I would expect this to take at least a restart of avast or even a reboot to tell if it changes the behavior. Tomorrow!
Have you made any changes to the default file system shield settings ?
Even if there were no persistent or transient caching, it shouldn't make a huge difference as the file system shield only scans files which are active, it is an 'on-access' scanner. So I would have to ask why 32k+ files are active on boot as that should be the only reason what avast scans them ?
Whilst NON reports his system scans 'many' system files that is no where in the thousands of files on boot.
What other security software do you have installed, firewall, anti-spyware, etc. ?
Any other scanning activity would naturally force avast to scan that content also.
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For me it's not so much like 20k, it's around 2k after boot. What I think odd is scanned files, avast scans system files like KERNEL32.DLL every boot.
No change to default settings.
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Didn't you mention that the Persistent cache isn't working in w2k, if so that accounts for it as many system files that would be included in the Persistent cache (if it were working). But that doesn't account for the difference on your system on the radical numbers scanned on Chucky500 system of 20k+.
That is why the question on any change to default settings for Chucky500.
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Unchecking persistent caching made no change in the behavior.
No changes to the default file shield settings. I didn't make any changes from v6 other the downloading/installing of v7, which according to my notes was done on 3/24.
I have Zone Alarm Professional firewall. It does not have a virus scanner and is just a firewall (rather old one too, but it works!).
When I look at the task manager, it is AvastSvc.exe that is hogging all the CPU. If I run another rather CPU-intensive program such as 7-zip at normal priority, 7-zip will prevail, but if put 7-zip at low priority, then AvastSvc.exe tends to take over the CPU and 7-zip gets very little time.
I wonder if turning off the File Shield and turning it back on will cut the auto scan. Will have to try that, but it would be a kludgy solution.
This scene is bad enough I may just want to go back to v6, but I don't know if that's really going to work.
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I didn't expect it to since it apparently doesn't work in w2k and the numbers of files that would be in the Persistent cache aren't going to be massive.
You need to get your head around the fact that avast doesn't initiate a scan it is a resident on-access scanner and is responding to activity, touching the files (executing them or opening them with write permission, etc.) that it is why scanning the files.
Turning off the file system shield not a kludgy solution it would be crazy as that is the very time when the file system shield is needed.
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I would suggest that you try a clean install of avast 7.0.1426:
- Download the latest version of avast, 7.0.1426 http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe (http://files.avast.com/iavs5x/avast_free_antivirus_setup.exe) and save it to your HDD, somewhere you can find it again (if you didn't save your last download). Use that when you reinstall.
- Download the avast! Uninstall Utility, aswClear.exe find it here (http://www.avast.com/uninstall-utility) and save it to your HDD (it has uninstall tools for 5.x, 6.0.x and 7.0.x). - 1. Now uninstall avast! (using add remove programs, if you can't do that start from the next step), reboot.
- 2. run the avast! Uninstall Utility from safe mode, first for 6.x if previously installed and then for 7.0, once complete reboot into normal mode.
- 3. install the latest version, reboot.
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My opinion is that he had some other scanner running. When you have that going it will show a huge volume of files having been scanned because another scanner trips avast and makes it scan what is being scanned.
So it isn't what is active as he probably had something else scanning his system and avast scans those files at the same time. Logical and easily not noticed.
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Downloaded and installed v7.0.1426 a couple of months ago on a W2K box, and it is generally fine. The only thing that bothers me is that upon most startups Avast (the red/yellow ball is rotating away continuously) is scanning the C: drive. The File System shield shows this. So far I have not been able to find the switch to turn this off. And I haven't found anything discussing it in the forum after looking through a couple of pages and doing a couple of searches. I'd prefer to not have this scan when I start up, and back in v6 I did not. The scan makes things a lot slower to get my other programs started up, and the drive is chattering away causing extra wear. I'd prefer to save this kind of scan for my weekly system work session.
I agree with you.
I have same problem here. Avast no stop scan the HD C: this slow down my computer, hd tune helped me discover this issue. look
(http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/6517/captureda.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/803/captureda.jpg/)
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Hi, thanks primeiro for your input. Maybe you need to do a reinstall, like DavidR suggested. I finally got a chance to follow his instructions, so downloaded a copy of avast and aswClear, and needed some time to do the clean and reinstall (maybe this weekend?). But go figure: the last couple of days I haven't had the ball rotating away after startup ??? I will monitor and go ahead with reinstall if it misbehaves.
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Per my post of June 15, the orange ball has not been rotating and seems to act normally. Go figure! So I'll consider this thread closed for my purposes. I wonder if others' (primero) problems stopped also.
Well, I see a new version (1451) is posted. Off to the races...