File was skipped

[MikeBCda]

Hi all,
Couldn't find this in a search here, at least not with the default 60-day setting.  I did select all forums and "all posters", however.

I did my twice-weekly disk scan last night (4-home with all updates), and it seemed to run fine, nothing infected found.

Out of curiosity, I looked at the record afterwards, and it had a HUGE list of entries marked "File was skipped because of scanner settings (42016)".  Most of these were txt's and ini's, with a few "exe-unknown thread".

I discovered afterwards that in my report settings, I'd added a tick to "skipped files".  When I un-ticked this and ran the scan again, I got the fairly usual list of "in use by another process".

Can I safely assume that the first report was the normal result of ticking "skipped files" and running a standard scan?

Thanks and best,
Mike

[Vlk]

That 'error' is reported for every file that the scanner assumes is safe in the sense it cannot contain a virus (smart boy, isn't it? . You're probably doing the scan using the Quick or Normal sensitivity.

You should never see this if you scan using Thorough as the thorough scan is actually dumber - it scans everything, unconditionally.

Hope this helps a bit,
Vlk

[MikeBCda]

Thanks, Vlk (incidentally, so I can keep it straight in future, is that a cap "I" or a lower-case "L"?)

I did mention that I'd run a standard scan, so you've essentially confirmed my guess, that it was just reporting files the standard scan would skip anyway.  I imagine the "unable to access" ones were also buried in there somewhere, but since the report ran nearly 2K I didn't bother wading through it in detail.

Best,
Mike

[Vlk]

I imagine the "unable to access" ones were also buried in there somewhere, but since the report ran nearly 2K I didn't bother wading through it in detail.

Right, that's why there's the special option to not report 'skipped' files.

incidentally, so I can keep it straight in future, is that a cap "I" or a lower-case "L"?

Surprisingly, it's a lower-case "L". The word means Wolf in Czech and is an abbreviation of my surname...

[Lisandro]

Thanks, Vlk (incidentally, so I can keep it straight in future, is that a cap "I" or a lower-case "L"?)

I did mention that I'd run a standard scan, so you've essentially confirmed my guess, that it was just reporting files the standard scan would skip anyway.  I imagine the "unable to access" ones were also buried in there somewhere, but since the report ran nearly 2K I didn't bother wading through it in detail.

Best,
Mike

Mike:

1) is a low 'l' and not a cap 'I'
2) if you run scheduled scannings, why don't you set a time that you are not using the computer and run the 'Thorough' scanning? Just a suggestion.  

[MikeBCda]

Thanks, both of you

Technical, actually a Thorough scan would be no problem at all for me in terms of time.  We had another thread here somewhere quite recently where we got into how long scans take to run, and I'd mentioned there that on my system (currently only about 4 gig used) a Thorough scan takes only very slightly longer than a Standard scan, maybe all of 30 or 45 seconds more.

(Whew, out of breath.  Was that a new record for a run-on sentence?   )