Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: nrv on September 30, 2006, 02:51:23 PM
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The latest version of Avast Home edition downloaded yesterday and today when I ran the scan it seems that I now have an additional few hundred thousand files that I didn't have before the new version.
Is this related to the new version itself? Or is the new version uncovering files the previous version didn't scan?
I haven't added anything to my hard drive other than the new version.
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Can you expand on this information, what additional few hundred thousand files (Hasn't your Mother told you a million times not to exaggerate ;D ;D) ?
Can you give some examples of the files and locations ?
In my version of avast I have 207 files in 21 folders (winXP explorer, Properties of the Alwil Software folder) , so I can see a couple of hundred new files not a few hundred Thousand new files ?
Where are you getting this information from ?
What is your OS ?
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Hi David,
Thanks for your reply.
No exaggeration.
I'm watching the scan take place and yesterday I had just over 600 thousand files scanned and this morning it was well over 900 thousand files scanned.
Using Window xp professional.
Also, I see my hard drive has increased in filled space since the download from 28 gigs to over 39 gigs with nothing else added to my har drive but the latest version.
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As I've been asked not to list this as a separate post, the new version also has increased my hard drive usage from 28 gigs to over 39 gigs without anything else added to my hard drive other than the new version
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The scan count includes the total files scanned including those inside archive files, so say you have an .iso or .cab or .zip file which represents one single file on your hdd but, it could contain many hundred or thousands of files.
These files are unpacked in a temporary location and should on successful completion of the scan should be removed. Look for files with UNPxxxxx (where xxxx is a numeric value) in C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Local Settings\Temp\_avast4_ folder, this is the default location for these files.
You could clean all temp folders and see if that reduces the overhead.
1. ClearProg - Temp File Cleaner (http://www.clearprog.de/) or CCleaner - Temp File Cleaner, etc. (http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/)
2. CWShredder (http://www.intermute.com/products/home_user.html)
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Thanks David.
I'll give that a try.
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As I've been asked not to list this as a separate post, the new version also has increased my hard drive usage from 28 gigs to over 39 gigs without anything else added to my hard drive other than the new version
That was me so we can keep what is essentially the same issue together.
avast is an 11.5MB download depending on language version and there is no way that could expand to an extra 11GB on your previous HDD used space. So this is very strange and I doubt that any UNPxxxx files left after a scan wouldn't account for this 11GB without getting some sort of error or warning that might have resulted from the UNPxxxx file being left.
So I will wait to see what you turn up from my previous post.
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Hi again David,
I ran the scan for the temporary avast file but it didn't locate it using the path you offered with my own info in place.
So I ran a general disk clean up.
I ran the standard disk clean up and it didn't list the additional tempory files there either.
Nothing so far has revealed where the additional usage is located.
There is still the additional usage on my HDD.
Also, maybe a year or two ago I recall installing an updated version of avast home and something similar happened where there was this huge increase in HDD use.
If I remember correctly within a few days Avast provided a new version that corrected the problem then.
I don't know that this is the same situation but I know I did not have anywhere near 39 gigs of usage on my HDD before installing the latest version.
This is on my desktop PC and we use it sparingly and for specific purposes compared to the general use of our laptops.
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David,
this last disk cleaner located the \Temp\_avast4_ folder and it only contains a 100 kbs.
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I just realised I gave you an unintentional link for CWShreader which has nothing to do with cleaning temp folders.
Add the 100KB to that of your avast program folder and you don't come up with much my avast4 program folder is 61MB, so I have no idea where this extra comes from. I simply can't see how an 11.5 MB install file can turn into an extra 11GB on your HDD, if anyone could come up with this kind of compression (1000:1) they would make a fortune.
Is there any way of doing a files and folder search by date for newly created files or folders, because I can't see how this can be down to avast if there aren't any large UNPxxxx files ?
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I just went over my computer searching for any additional or new files or downloads besides the avast and came up with nothing new.
Other than the avast update no one has downloaded anything other than a few expected emails and business reports.
Those are accounted for and none contained more than 350 kbs max.
I've rescanned and come up with the same conclusion.
I called a techie friend at the local university and he recommended removing the avast on my HDD and downloading another copy of it from Avast and reinstalling from scratch.
I am in the processing of setting this up and will run the new download and see what happens.
Thanks again for your help, David.
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Sorry, some mintes ago i have postet this in wrong thread. Here´s now the posting. Hope it´s right.
Hallo,
i´m new here and from germany. Hey, is there any avast-forum in german??
My problem,
i´ve received an update of avast-Virusscanner online wih automatic update. The new version is now Avast! 4.7 Home Edition Build Oct2006 (4.7.892).
First my problem was that the onAcces-scanner displays the big messages from scanning a website while opening in a browser. Before updating to new version there was no message. The big blue / Yellow messages were only displayed while receiving emails. But now its very confusing wehne opening a webpage and there is this *nag-screen* while surfing Undecided
But now..i reached a new problem.
After the update..
My drive D: has 2,4 Gig free space (there are most progs and files on drive D). Now after avast-update there was 240 Meg free space on Drive D. What the hell is going on here?
The Avast-Folder is about 57,2MB with 199 Files and 20 folders, on Drive the folder has 57,5 MB. The Partition D: has 6.62 GB.
The space on my Drive C: is normally and untouched (plus-minus some MB).
Operatingsystem is windowsXP pro SP2, othe security-software is Bitdefender72free, PandaAV7, AdAware SE Personal 106 and Bazooka 113beta2, ZoneAlarm v61744001. The other Scanners i have for cross-checking and comparison.
Please tell my something to do that i have space on my partition again.
Thanks,
Michael.
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First my problem was that the onAcces-scanner displays the big messages from scanning a website while opening in a browser. Before updating to new version there was no message. The big blue / Yellow messages were only displayed while receiving emails. But now its very confusing wehne opening a webpage and there is this *nag-screen* while surfing Undecided
Left click the avast icon, click standard shield, customize, advanced tab. Check to see if there is a check mark in "show detailed info on preformed action". If there is, clear the check mark. Do the same with web shield and script blocking if these providers are present.
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1. The Forum language is English only that way more people can assist with problems.
2. This Web Shield, Customize, Advanced 'Show detailed info on performed actions' option is OFF by default and shouldn't have been enabled because of an update. (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v325/for-dwr/showdetailedweb.jpg) The Standard Shield and Internet Mail also have this option (again OFF by default), so also check those.
3. I have no idea why this might be related to avast or not, but I suggest you also check the folders I have mentioned in my other posts and clearing of temp files and see if that has any effect. The ClearProg link above is a German company.
4. I notice you also have a second AV Panda, it isn't recommended having two resident AVs on the same system as they can cause conflicts that could lock your system. Panda also has the bad habit of not encrypting its signature files so they could be incorrectly detected as viruses. This could also cause interaction resulting in duplication of scans and possibly an increase in temp files but, I can't say for certain.
It isn't a case of two resident AVs providing twice the protection, they may leave you more vulnerable. Bitdefender is fine as a second AV as it is an on-demand (you start the scan) scanner.
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Hey ho :-) :-)
thanks! i´ve found the switch to supress this messages. :-)
David: I know the problem wiht panda-AV. The Panda-folder is disabled for scan with Avast because of the problem that avast recognized viruses. I don´t run Panda or other scanners and Avast at the same time. Avast is standard and Panda is not resident in memory and the protection is disabled. I use Panda and the other scanners only on demand and only some times for scannig files if another Antivirus found viruses. Thats only to check files twice.
hmmz..
i´ve checked the folders vor the Avast-TEMPfiles before posting the problem. There are no files in that folder :-\
My Drive C: is not changed in free space. Some MB only. But the Drive where Avast is installed has changed from 2,4GB to 240MB free space :-(
I don´t know why. No idea what happens.
I don´t have installed other programs, don´t burn CD´s wich want some temporary space, no downloads, no new saved data.. nothing.
only let avast make the update.
hmmz..
now i have run some programs to delete temp-files, cleaner-programs like TraxEx and CC-cleaner.
No change in free space :-(
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It isn't a question of running them at the same time but I thought PandaAV7 is a resident scanner and even with it paused or disabled it will have virtual device drivers loaded from registry legacy keys.
I have no idea either, on my program update I have had no noticible difference in my HDD freespace, although there have been a number of windows security updates of late and you are likely to see them in large quantities in the windows folder, but that is on your C: drive.
The same answer I gave for 'nrv' I can't see how this could happen from an incremental program update that wasn't very large could turn into GBs of additional data when your avast4 folder appears normal and there are no files in the _avast4_ temp folder, I'm baffled.
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hallo,
hmm..i don´t know :-(
hmm..there is definitifly no resident scanner :-)
i´ve unload them and remove them. They only starts on demand, but it´s right..after start them n demand the scanner is resident and i must restart to unload them again. But..it runs very good.
hmm
i will take a look at the free-space problem next time. I send a posting if i see anything. Some things go wrong with this update
Greets,
Michael.
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Even if something went wrong with the update it shouldn't result in this kind of decrease in Free space, without any resultant UNPxxxx files I would have thought. Even if you were to download the full version 11.5MB and then uninstall avast and reinstall using the downloaded version I doubt that it would clear any increase that you have seen.
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It's not very surprising that the new build can scan up to several hundreds of thousands of files more than the previous. The reason is simple - the re-added CHM unpacker.
CHM files (Windows HTML Help files) tend to contain many subobjects (pages) that count as separate files. E.g. just the CHM's bundled with MS Office contain tens of thousands of files...
Cheers
Vlk
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After removing the new installation of the recent version of avast home I saw my computer's HDD shows I have used only 28gigs of HDD space, this is what I had thought and is normal, while the new version of avast showed it had scanned files for a total of 39.1 gigs.
After downloading the latest version again and installing and running the scan the scan states I once again had files totalling 39.1 gigs scanned..if I had used 39.1 gigs of HDD space then my computer should have indicated that I had already used that much space, but it didn't.
Is there any possibility I can download the previous version again?
I'd like to remove the latest version
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avast is not telling you how much space is used on your hard drive, avast is not a disk space utility.
avast is telling you how much data it scanned. A lot of the data that avast is scanning for you is in the form of compressed files. avast unpacks that data temporarily during the scan to check all the contents. At the end it reports to you the total of all the unpacked data it scanned for you.
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After removing the previous new download from my HDD and downloading and installing a fresh version of the updated avast home, I am still seeing that it is scanning over 39 gigs while the the total used space on my computer comes to 28+ gigs and that includes the XP restore files.
Where are these extra gigs the scan is finding coming from when they weren't there yesterday when I ran the morning scan using the previous, non updated, version?
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I have removed this post - not relevant
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Have you read this thread at all?
I explained to you in the post above ....
avast is not telling you how much space is used on your drive.
avast is telling you the sum total of every file it scanned including all the compressed files it expanded and unpacked temporarily during the scan. Those temporarily unpacked files are deleted after avast has scanned them but their size is included in the scanned data count.
Vlk explained clearly to you above that the new release of avast contains a new unpacker that, during scans, unpacks and scans more data than in the previous release.
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Sorry..I did miss all of that explanation.. I thought I had followed the threadsbut apparently not..
may not have read.
My point, which I think you are missing is, I know what is on this HDD as it was purchased new recently; it is used in a home where only two people access it and it is used solely for business related emails and files.
There aren't any zip files stored on it.
There aren't any CAB files stored on it.
There are Word files and Excel files and Access files and some powerpoint files and some email letters.
There are some graphics and photos.
There is software that was installed at the factory.
Dell says the total files content for what they installed would not come to that many gigs.
I can virtually add up the file sizes per folder and come up with a total close to what the C:\ shows.
So I hope you'll understand I can account for nearly everything on the HDD and so for avast to suddenly inform me I have 39gigs of files on a computer that has limited use and more limited uses for storage and all the temp files are empty and I have only been able to determine approximately 28 gigs of usage on the disk and approximately 18 gigs of accountable mostly text files, I am still a bit doubtful as to the ability of avast to find all of these other files that it itself did not create.
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Sorry..I must have missed all of that explanation.. I thought I had followed the threads but apparently not..
My point, which I think you are missing is, I know what is on this HDD as it was purchased new recently; it is used in a home where only two people access it and it is used solely for business related emails and files.
There aren't any zip files stored on it.
There aren't any CAB files stored on it.
There are Word files and Excel files and Access files and some Powerpoint files and some email letters.
There are some graphics and photos.
There is software that was installed at the factory.
Dell says the total files content for what they installed would not come to that many gigs.
I can virtually add up the file sizes per folder and come up with a total close to what the C:\ shows.
So I hope you'll understand I can account for nearly everything on the HDD and so for avast to suddenly inform me I have 39gigs of files on a computer that has limited use and more limited uses for storage and all the temp files are empty and I have only been able to determine approximately 28 gigs of usage on the disk and approximately 18 gigs of accountable mostly text files, I am still a bit doubtful as to the ability of avast to find all of these other files that I have to wonder if it itself did not create.
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nrv,
You appear to have a Dell computer that is apparently quite new.
I too have a Dell computer that is quite new.
I rather suspect that similar system images would have been placed by Dell on the hard drives of your system and mine. I know that my system arrived from Dell with less than 5Gb occupied on the C:\ drive.
There are certainly compressed files (including many CAB files) as part of the system image placed by Dell on the system. For example the C:\i386 folder occupies 340Mb of space on my system, when that folder is thoroughly scanned by avast then 1.3Gb of unpacked files is reported scanned.
It appears that you have added a large volume of data to the system. Only you know the numbers and mix of the files but if a large part of the extra data is Microsoft Office type files, Excel, Word, Powerpoint then I think you may indeed have a valid concern about the data scanned count.
My testing shows that when avast scans (at standard or thorough sensitivity) any of these document types the data scanned count is about double the real size of the document (I just scanned one single .doc file; the number of files scanned was reported as 10 and the scanned size was double the real file size). This seems to be consistent for any of the MSOffice type files (a folder with 25 documents when scanned reports 158 files and scanned count double the real file size).
When these documents are scanned at the quick scan sensitivity the scanned count is the same as the real document size and the file count is correct too.
So if you have 10Gb of MSOffice files then avast is likely to report it scanned 20Gb and very many more files than you really have. This might go a long way towards explaining the "overestimate" of scanned data you are seeing.
If you have a folder just containing MSOffice type documents you might want to just run a scan of that folder and see what the results show.