Through Scan + Archives scan too long...

[JojoFrench]

Hello ! It's me again !

Yesterday i've started a personal-competition : Keep my computer Switched On in Windows as long as possible without errors (bsod or others), shutdown or reboot... And it work, since 2 days, 5 hours, 27 minutes !

In avast!, i finally get tired of the skins...  So i started avast with the Skin-free user interface (ashsimpl2.exe)... Then i ran a full through scan of my disk C: (with archive scan enabled) this afternoon, at 1 o' clock...
Now, it's 22:11 and avast! continues scanning... My disk is 40GB, with 20GB free, and avast! has only scanned 233000 files !!! in about 7 hours !!!

My question is Why is the scan so looooooong?
Note: i test my 256MB RAM PC, 1,64 ghz, 40gb, with many many programs running... + CrystalClear theme + Transparent Windows...

[DavidR]

Because it is so through and all those archived have to be unzipped and scanned and that will result in far greater than the 20GB data size on your HDD. For XP you could probably use some more RAM otherwise there will be much use of virtual memory (swap file).

Archives by their nature are inert, you need to extract the files and then you have to run them, before that happens avasts Standard Shield should have scanned them. Through is also by its design very through 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.

[Lisandro]

I think the 256Mb of RAM only is the guilty boy here