quick scan or full scan?

[Mahmoud Atatrah]

which is the best : quick scan or full scan?
thanks...

[Secondmineboy]

Full Scan, but click on Details and change some settings.

Activate scanning for Potentially unwanted programs, Scanning of whole files, scanning all packers. Then you
should be good to go.

And on the first page of the settings you can check scan all files at the bottom. This all takes longer but is better.

Or you could do a boot time scan under scan and boot time scan, please also look into the settings here.

[stukindaguy]

Neither is "best". The quick scan is faster but less thorough, searching only the most common infection areas, whereas a full scan looks everywhere but takes longer. My rule of thumb is quick scans weekly, full scan monthly, but to be honest that might be overkill. Avast scans files as they are opened anyway, so most of the time, the real time shields will catch it.

[Pondus]

there is no best....
quick scan covers all area where activly running malware use, full scan may detect inert files

i only run full if quick detect something

[DavidR]

-- With a resident on-access antivirus like avast, the need for frequent on-demand scans is much depreciated.

For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that would be otherwise be dormant or inert. If they were active files then the on-access file system shield would be scanning them before being created, modified, opened or executed. This is more so for a Full scan as you aren't on the system drive/partition for the most part if you have multiple drives (or there wouldn't be much point in doing a Full scan).

I have avast set to do a scheduled weekly Quick scan, set at a time and day that I know the computer will be on. If for some reason my system wasn't on, no big deal I will catch up on the next scheduled scan.