Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: philbobilbo on January 22, 2005, 12:32:25 AM
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Here's my specs:
Win 98 SE (all critical patches)
latest Avast
HDD=11.3 GB o'data
I'm wondering why Avast is such a slow scanner. Yes, I put the settings on it to be "thorough" and "Scan archives", but it took an hour and 23 minutes to complete! So, what should be the "normal" scan settings? I like the program, but can't give it a thumbs up because of the slow scanner. For comparison, AVG6 used to take 11 min; Antivir about 30.
Look forward to your posts. Thanks.
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The others antiviruses products not scan compressed archives, result in a faster scan.
Do you have a Games installed?
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Ah, Matt, so if I follow you, turning off the "Scan Archives" will take care of the issues regarding speed. Not sure I understand what you mean by "Games installed" though; this PC is old enough that I haven't used it as a "game machine" since probably late 2002. If you are asking whether or not I turned off everything else in the background but Explorer and Systray, I turned everything off except Sygate Personal Firewall. I've read in other posts you CAN scan with Avast in Safe Mode, so perhaps I'll give that a shot and note any speed differences.
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Ah, Matt, so if I follow you, turning off the "Scan Archives" will take care of the issues regarding speed. Not sure I understand what you mean by "Games installed" though; this PC is old enough that I haven't used it as a "game machine" since probably late 2002. If you are asking whether or not I turned off everything else in the background but Explorer and Systray, I turned everything off except Sygate Personal Firewall. I've read in other posts you CAN scan with Avast in Safe Mode, so perhaps I'll give that a shot and note any speed differences.
I ask you of the games, because games haves archives with extensions complicateds and scan achives of the games is slow.
Try scan in boot with avast.
Menu> Shedule a boot scan
One ask:
This time 1:30 is in normal mode? Try "faster" mode....
Goodbye!
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Tell us your memory and CPU setup...
Archive scanning can be a killer task for Win9x and slow hardware...
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Yeah, it's a sled by today's standards:
800 PIII
256MB memory
I'm guessing that's the deal. I'll do a scan in Safe Mode exactly the way I did in normal mode and let you know the results. Should be informative for everyone with an older PC.
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It's the Win98 which causes the slowdowns...
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My avast scanner is also slow, very slow. I have the new version and with the old one wasnt that slow and i have XP sp2. i dunno ???
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I have Windows XP SP2 on a Pentium IV 3.19 Mhz with 250 GB drive and 1 GB RAM and 400,000 plus files (25 GB worth of files) and it takes about an hour and a half to two hours to scan that lot with Thorough scan selected and archives checked.
Yes it's slow but better safe than sorry:) and that is a serious amount of data which I do back up regularly.
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Hi guys, can anyone of you tell me why I should enable the scanning of archives ? I mean, as soon an archive is unpacked, this will be noticed by the guard. So why scanning packed archives ?
Also, some rocketscientist told me that scanning archives was not recommended because it could cause everlasting copying. But he wasn't able to explain to me why (because I didn't "get" it, too dumb I guess ;D )
Could you explain this perhaps ?
Fast.
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I enable scanning of archives every time because once or twice in the past Avast has caught an archive file which had become infected somehow - probably something I downloaded deciding to piggy back on my files - and it meant I could delete it with no risk of the computer becoming infected as on each occasion the infected files have been in My Documents when found in this way. As I'd' backed the relevant files up and had clean versions, there was no problem.
That's quite true about Avast spotting stuff that's infected if it runs, but it can't necessarily deal with trojans - it really is an antivirus which is why the free cleaning tool is available - and it's better to stop these before they get started if you can.
To answer your other question - way back in May of last year I had a major problem with a trojan file which downloaded an archive file into my Windows System file and which then every time Avast was run caused Avast to duplicate its .dmp archive files. I ended up having to delete these files manually and was very lucky that I could resolve it this way.
I suspect what your "rocketscientist" meant was that some antiviruses may cache files which they scan - I don't know the full answer on that one and maybe one of the others can answer in more detail.
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Slow is very subjective, it depends on your system, ram, cpu, avast settings, programs running in the background. With little or no information it is virtually impossible to suggest a course of action.
I would however review what programs there are running in the background and stop those not required. I would also suggest running HiJackThis as it will show exactly what is running, use an on-line scan of your Hijackthis log file try here http://hijackthis.de/index.php to identify what is adware/spyware, not essential, etc.
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I Have a 10gb in files, and my KAV scan in 3 hours!! >:( ;)
Athlon XP 1700+
40GB Seagate 5.600 RPM.
256 Dimm
Avast its very faster, avast here scan in 40 min maximum mode.
In Windows ME too here 40min....
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Don't see anything nasty in my logfiles but you never know -
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You need to attach it as a .txt file, that way it will open in the browser window.
For an on-line scan of your Hijackthis log file try here http://hijackthis.de/index.php
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Here you go:)
I ran a full system scan with Avast yesterday plus Spybot and Ad Aware, and I ran Disk Cleanup. I also finally got round to setting up the Avast screensaver yesterday.
Sorry about the error in posting.
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There are a few Unknown and some possibly nasty, see http://hijackthis.de/logfiles/805e96c7430763834c608747e2fef5cd.html.
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First Steps is the software my supplier installed to tell me how to use the puter as a newbie.
Bella Online I added myself because I write as teh Bella Online Tatting Editor and couldn't get into the Bella Online chat room - I was trying adding it as a trusted site to see if that worked but it didn't.
The others I will get onto tomorrow as it's getting late. Thank you!
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OK I've disabled Active X in Internet Explorer - the only time I use that is go to go Bella Online for the chat and there are advertisements there which may contain Active X controls. That's probably where I got it, or from the My Yahoo which is my homepage in my web browsers. An Active X control doesn't work in Netscape or Firefox because it is Internet Explorer specific.
I use the Google Toolbar, ICQ Lite and Yahoo Messenger so I left those controls alone. I do not use Windows Messenger and thought I had that disabled.
I removed the mediaplex ones and that one at No. 17 in the list, but the five marked as protocols down near the bottom which are marked for removal as unsafe I wasn't quite sure about - will it be OK to remove these? They are in the system folder.
I ran Spybot and immunized, and I downloaded the Spywareblaster program from the link within Spybot and installed that as I've heard it recommended several places.
The Adobe Gamma.loader.ink one I haven't a clue what it's related to, but I do have Adobe products on the puter - Adobe Acrobat 6 and Adobe PHotoshop Elements 2.0. Could it be related to either of those?
Thank you DavidR for your help!
Always good to get a little more secure:)
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Do a google search on files that you are unsure of (the fact that they are in the system directory is often to confuse and stop people getting rid of them, the first one hsppp.dll and wowctl2.dll both have loads of hits pointing to a trojan clicker. I'm surprised AdAware and S&D didn't catch them.
Windows messenger service can be disabled.
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The Adobe Gamma.loader.ink one I haven't a clue what it's related to, but I do have Adobe products on the puter - Adobe Acrobat 6 and Adobe PHotoshop Elements 2.0. Could it be related to either of those?
Sure. Adobe Gamma is a part of Adobe Photoshop Elements.
Anyway, you can delete the entry if you want ;)
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I'm surprised AdAware and S&D didn't catch them.
Me too!
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Looks as though I'm clean now except for No. 17.
I have found that this appears each time after running my e-mail client, Eudora which I have used for years. Wonder if it's time to uninstall and use Pegasus instead! It does have advertisements in it because I use the sponsored version, wonder if it's that.
I tested this by running Hijack This before I launched anything other than my normal startup items, then I launched Eudora, checked mail and shut it down again, then I ran Hijack This again. No. 17 wasn't there before I ran Eudora, it was there after - so I'm thinking it's in Eudora.
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Hopefully you are in the clear now, regular use of hijackthis will identify any new activity, so you can keep on top of it.
Remember google really is your friend.
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Thanks very much for your time, advice and help:) I'll keep an eye on Eudora because some of its advertisement activity has been a little suspicious in the past. Need to read up on some other e-mail clients I think.
The computer seemed a lot less sluggish in booting up this evening so I think that one or more of these items was causing problems. Great to have it sorted out:)
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Well, back to the original topic, I tried the very same scan in Safe mode, and after about an hour of scanning, it locked up on an archived file. My guess is that this program just doesn't "carry the mail" very well with the old 98 OS. I like the program, but it's coming off my 98 PC.
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That may be your guess, but there are many, many happy win98, avast users who are not suffering slow scanning. Don't just give up help us to help you, let us know a little about your system.
CPU, RAM, try and reduce the programs running in the background that are not required. Run hijackthis, it will show exactly what is running and we can try and identify what may be slowing down the system.
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Well, back to the original topic, I tried the very same scan in Safe mode, and after about an hour of scanning, it locked up on an archived file. My guess is that this program just doesn't "carry the mail" very well with the old 98 OS. I like the program, but it's coming off my 98 PC.
Which is the file name, path and extension?
Do you have enough free HDD space?
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Well, back to the original topic, I tried the very same scan in Safe mode, and after about an hour of scanning, it locked up on an archived file.
What exactly does it mean, "locked up"? Any hard disk activity? Can the "Stop" button be pressed?
Do you know what archive is it?