Author Topic: Questions about Avast  (Read 3318 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Xtreme2damax

  • Guest
Questions about Avast
« on: June 15, 2006, 12:51:12 AM »
Hey everyone, I'm new to these forums, so if this thread is in the wrong section, I ask politely that you move it to a more appropriate section, thanks;)

Anyways I had to find a better alternative for an antivirus Than Norton Antivirus, Because Norton and it's auto protect features seem to be CPU Guzzlers. So I found avast and thought "what the Heck, why not give it a try?" So far I've been impressed with it.

Anyways my question is, that it seems with Avast to take over 5 hours to do a through scan, as opposed to norton, which would only take an hour or so, to do a full system scan.

Is there a way to significantly reduce the scan time, or do I have to let it scan for over 5 hours?

This causes a bit of concern, as my computer overheats very easily, and usually have to keep it cool by placing it in front of a window with a box fan blowing into the case.

That way I said of keeping my computer cool, doesn't work very well in hot weather, so I like to keep my computer off, or use it only for a short time in hot weather, or the summer.

So with that said, is there a way to reduce the scan time for viruses significantly, so I can reduce the amount of time my computer is on?

Thank You, if you could let me know;)

Offline igor

  • Avast team
  • Serious Graphoman
  • *
  • Posts: 11849
    • AVAST Software
Re: Questions about Avast
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2006, 01:03:03 AM »
Well, the question is - what kind of scan are you running? (I mean the sensitivity, archive settings, ...)
If you are running a "thorough scan", I'd suggest to use "standard scan" instead; "thorough" is probably an overkill in most cases. Also, it's probably not necessary to scan the content of archives very often.

Offline DavidR

  • Avast Überevangelist
  • Certainly Bot
  • *****
  • Posts: 88895
  • No support PMs thanks
Re: Questions about Avast
« Reply #2 on: June 15, 2006, 01:09:35 AM »
First I would ensure that there are no remnants of NAV that may be present after uninstall.

Remove Norton - Select the relevant link.
The NAV 2003 removal tool can be downloaded here: ftp://ftp.symantec.com/misc/consumer/Rnav2003.exe
Manual Removal NAV 2003 or earlier - Manual Removal NAV 2003 or earlier
A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT

The duration of the through scan with archives installed is likely to to take some considerable time although 5 hours does seem a long time and as Igor mentions perhaps a little overkill. The duration also depends on how much data you have on your system and its performance and you don't mention anything about OS, CPU, RAM, etc.

If you have installed avast under winXP/NT/win2k then after install avast should have asked you to do a scan on the next boot, etc. did you do that ?
If you have XP you could schedule a boot-time scan which should give you a reasonably clean system. My own personal view is that archive files are inert and first need to be opened, extracted and then run, avast should have scanned the file/s before you can execute them, slightly negating the need to scan archives in the on-demand scan. But you decision as it is your system and risk.

I would also look at the overheating issue rather than try to find ways not to increase the cpu activity as that would be crippling your performance. It is just June and things are going to get much hotter in the coming months. Some open the case an point a desktop fan into it to increase airflow as a down and dirty option, but some extra case fans and or a better cpu heatsink and fan is the preferred option.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security

Offline Tonanet

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 353
  • I'm a llama!
Re: Questions about Avast
« Reply #3 on: June 15, 2006, 01:26:00 AM »
Hello!

Very weird... In my machine (AMD XP 2.200+, 384 Ram) having a standard scan within archives too, takes 16 minutes to pass by 17.1 GB of files... One of the most fast scanners that I had in my machine (+/- the same time that AVG and nod32 had too)... In other words, Reallly fast!  ;D

Thanks for your time,

Elminster


Xtreme2damax

  • Guest
Re: Questions about Avast
« Reply #4 on: June 15, 2006, 05:29:25 AM »
Sorry I couldn't reply earlier, I'll give some details on my Pc, so you may be able to recommend a good setting.

My PC is an emachine W2925 PC, I have since Upgraded it since I bought it, It has an Intel Celeron D Processor @2.66 GHZ, 1024 (1 Gig) Of DDR Ram, I have 3 hard drives, HDD 1 (120 Gigabytes), HDD 2 (160 Gigabytes), and HDD 3 (40 Gigabytes).

On my first Hard drive, I have about 7 gigs+ of files and Programs Including The operating system. On my second hard drive, I have about 35 - 37 Gigabytes of Files, most of which are games, Programs, and the such.

On my third HDD, I have a series of freeware programs, all of each in thier own seperate Zipped Archive (Compressed) Folders, and That takes up about 3 - 5 Gigabytes in space.

I have reduced the scan settings to Standard Scan, and unchecked, check archive files. Hopefully that will reduce the scan time some.

I have alot of files on all my hard drives, and I presume that's what making it take that long to scan, Thanks for the info and tip's ;)

Offline DavidR

  • Avast Überevangelist
  • Certainly Bot
  • *****
  • Posts: 88895
  • No support PMs thanks
Re: Questions about Avast
« Reply #5 on: June 15, 2006, 01:55:34 PM »
Well you system is well up to the task, with the obvious issue of heat.

The Standard scan without archives is what I do on a weekly basis as part of my system maintenance. For me that is sufficient however, I did a through scan with archives very soon after I installed avast (even though avast did find a couple of viruses left behind from my previous AV after installation) just to ensure I had a clean start state. Yes it can take a lot of time but I didn't have anything like the data quantity you mention.

If you wanted to do a through scan with archives, I would suggest that you break it down into more manageable chunks rather than select Local Disks (which scans all hdds) and use the Folder Selection option, that way you only select folders/partitions, which should help with the duration of scan and heat.

Welcome to the forums.
Windows 10 Home 64bit/ Acer Aspire F15/ Intel Core i5 7200U 2.5GHz, 8GB DDR4 memory, 256GB SSD, 1TB HDD/ avast! free 24.2.6105 (build 24.2.8918.824) UI 1.0.799/ Firefox, uBlock Origin, uMatrix/ MailWasher Pro/ Avast! Mobile Security