Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: jforcht on October 18, 2008, 03:55:29 AM
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I downloaded avast today after not having virus scan software for about a year. I'm running my first scan now (thorough) and it's going ridiculously slowly. At first the speed was alright, but now it's taking a very long time to make any progress. It took about 10 minutes to increment from 42318 to 42329, and is continuing at this very slow rate. Is this normal, and if not what is the problem?
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Perhaps you can help us help you by giving us a bit more information.
Your operating system?
The type of avast scan you selected?
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os: windows xp
type of scan: thorough on I think it was on hard disk drives? or unremovable disk drive? I clicked the icon on the top right. Also I added another option, archive files I think?
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If you select a thorough scan with archive files then you are selecting the most rigorous and lengthy scan available in avast.
You might well want to choose this (and allow it it to complete) for your very first scan in avast but, given that you have the day in day out protection of avast, a weekly or so scan using the standard scan of avast should be more than adequate and, I hope you will observe, much speedier.
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I downloaded avast today after not having virus scan software for about a year.
It really would be hard to compare when you haven't been using any AV software for a year.
I'm running my first scan now (thorough) and it's going ridiculously slowly. At first the speed was alright, but now it's taking a very long time to make any progress.
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Other things which will effect the scan duration, your CPU, RAM and amount of data on your HDDs. What other security software do you use ?
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.
Is this normal, and if not what is the problem?
So I think you can see it would be hard to define what is normal as it would change from system to system.