Avast WEBforum
Other => General Topics => Topic started by: emptybeer on December 19, 2007, 11:27:34 PM
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I started a scan of my system yesterday after noting some strange behavior. I set it for a thorough scan. I have Windows XP Pro SP2, Pentium IV 2.4Gz, 1G RAM and two HDD of 200G each. It is still running (22 hours later). It is going very slow (currently seems to be stopped on file 643,148 in the c:\Windows directory). This just doesn't seem right. Any suggestions? Thanks.
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If you also selected scan archives, yes it could be a long duration, though 22 hours and not complete is certainly strange. How much data is actually on these 200GB HDDs ?
What other security based software do you have that might have an impact, like anti-spyware, etc. ?
Do you have anything else running in the background ?
Archive (zip, rar, etc.) files are by their nature are inert, you need to extract the files and then you have to run them to be a threat. Long before that happens avast's Standard Shield should have scanned them and before an executable is run that is scanned. Thorough is also by its design very thorough and perhaps a little overkill for routine use, were a Standard scan without archives should be adequate.
I have only ever done a through scan with archives once shortly after installation just to ensure a clean start state, but with XP for example avast will do a boot-time scan after installation if you select it, this I believe will be quicker and reasonably effective. Like everything in life things are a compromise.
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You can go to the program settings and turn on the creation of the report file (with "OK files" to be included as well in the report). This way, you can find out where the scan really stopped (it's going to be close to the end of the report).
The report file created (if you turned it on in program settings) will be (default location) at <avast4>\Data\Report\Simple User Interface.txt