Avast WEBforum

Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: SteveO29 on December 14, 2008, 03:23:52 AM

Title: Strange results after scan
Post by: SteveO29 on December 14, 2008, 03:23:52 AM
Hello

I really hope someone can help shed some light on what may or may not be a problem I'm having.

My computer crashed about two days ago (hardware related stuff, it seems to be fine now). Today I ran my first virus scan in a month and got some very strange results.

First of all, Avast gave me this report on a file:

C:\WINDOWS\SoftwareDistribution\Download\... \_sfx_0015._p                 Unable to scan: CAB archive is corrupted.

Yet I can't seem to find "_sfx_0015._p" with a search even when I have the protected files unhidden. Does anyone know what this file is? Is this anything to worry about?

But this is what I find ~really~ strange..

When the scan was finished the summary showed:

Number of scanned files/folders: 342824 / 5198
Number of infected files: 0
Total size of scanned files: 22.1

However, when I look at my drive.. the C: has 11.2 GB and the D: (a recovery partition) has 3.85 GB.. that certainly doesn't add up to 22.1 GB.

And 342,824 files? I've never seen that many files on my drive. I normally have around 98,000.

Also.. it takes me around 34 minutes to scan my drive when have around 15GB. Now that Avast tells me I have 22.1GB, it ~still~ only takes 34 minutes to scan. If the drive had 7GB more data.. it ~should~ take longer to scan than 34 minutes.

This is the first time I scanned the drive since Avast auto-updated.. perhaps Avast scans a bit differently now than before?

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on with my system? I always practice safe web browsing and routinely run virus, spyware and malware scans. Does anyone know how I can correct the problem? The computer seems to work fine otherwise.

Any replies will be greatly appreciated!
Title: Re: Strange results after scan
Post by: CharleyO on December 14, 2008, 04:23:31 AM
***

Here is a little information on that file from the MS knowledge base :

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/828030


***
Title: Re: Strange results after scan
Post by: SteveO29 on December 14, 2008, 08:48:11 AM
Hi CharleyO

Thank you for the link! I did a Google search for  "_sfx_0015._p" but came up empty. I read the page, but I'm still lost. Is the file really corrupted or does it mean that Avast is unable to unpack it to scan the contents of the archive? And I wonder.. is it an important file?

Also, I still can't understand why Avast tells me I have 22.1GB on my drive, when I check the drive it says I have a little over 15GB.

Also Avast says that I have 342,824 files on my drive.. in ~none~ of my previous Avast scans have I ~ever~ had over 100,000 files.

Does the updated version of Avast scan files differently than before the update? I just find this all kind of.. odd.
Title: Re: Strange results after scan
Post by: pk on December 14, 2008, 11:49:16 AM
Quote
Is the file really corrupted or does it mean that Avast is unable to unpack it to scan the contents of the archive?
Both are right. If the archive file was corrupted, so avast! is not able to unpack all files and scan them. This isn't an error neccessarily. It's a warning. It happens sometimes when you don't finish downloading from Internet, you cancel installation process or whatever.

Quote
Also, I still can't understand why Avast tells me I have 22.1GB on my drive, when I check the drive it says I have a little over 15GB.
We unpack all archives into memory so we scan them as normal files - that's why the number of files/size is increased by unpacked files.
Title: Re: Strange results after scan
Post by: SteveO29 on December 15, 2008, 03:58:52 AM

Hi pk, Thank you for the reply!

Quote
Is the file really corrupted or does it mean that Avast is unable to unpack it to scan the contents of the archive?
Both are right. If the archive file was corrupted, so avast! is not able to unpack all files and scan them. This isn't an error neccessarily. It's a warning. It happens sometimes when you don't finish downloading from Internet, you cancel installation process or whatever.

Okay, I understand that. But now I'm wondering what "_sfx_0015._p" does.. and if it's important for the computer to function properly.

Quote
Also, I still can't understand why Avast tells me I have 22.1GB on my drive, when I check the drive it says I have a little over 15GB.
We unpack all archives into memory so we scan them as normal files - that's why the number of files/size is increased by unpacked files.

Ohhh okay, but this must be a new way Avast scans.. right? Because I've used Avast for years and it's never had results like this before.