Avast scan stalls on thorough scan

[Tipton]

Hi everyone, I am new to the forum, as well as the Avast AV program. I had a question I was hoping could be answered. I have two hard drives on my system, a C drive and a D drive. When I set Avast to do a thorough scan, it seems to hang when it gets to my D drive. It does indeed finish the scan, but hangs during the D drive scan and moves really really slow. On my D drive I have folders that contain downloads for various software programs. I also have a folder for ghost backup images. When Avast gets to my Zone alarm folder where I keep various copies of the firwall, it slows to almost a stop. It hangs on "zone alarm for a few minutes. Then it does the same thing with my ghost images. If I have Avast set for a "standard" scan, it buzzes right through my D drive. What is Avast doing when it is hanging on these items during a thorough scan? The hard drive light is lit the entire time so it must be doing something. Also why does it do it on just a couple folders and not the rest? Maybe I am not seeing the others, I am not sure. I would appreciate any comments, and this looks like a wonderful support forum!  Thank you!

Douglas

I am running XP pro service pack one, with all updates.

[Culpeper]

I have a similar setup.  Scanning archive files takes longer than standard scanning.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

Also, selecting all non removable disk icon will set Avast to scan both drives.  Selecting the folder icon can help you narrow down exactly what you want scanned for a particular scan.

[Tipton]

Thanks for the reply. What is the norm for running a safe scan? Should I just be selecting Local disks, and have the slider set to "standard"? Thats the way I have it set now, plus I have scan within archives selected as well. Its only when I also add thorough scan, that it seems to slow to a crawl on some items.

Also, do I need to have Avast Test the memory during application startup?  What exactly is it doing when it does this test?

Thank you!
Douglas

[Culpeper]

Thorough is more comprehensive and is what I use.  Once you run a thorough scan through your entire system you can run a regular thorough scan periodically using the folder icon.  I don't use the standard scan.  Not selecting scanning archive files of course will speed up the scan process.  

Personally, I only run a scan when Avast gives me a warning about something like a suspicious email and so forth.  Then a run an entire scan of both hard drives.  That is just my way of doing an entire scan every so often.  Occassionally, I run a thorough scan of the Windows folder and subfolders though.

It really up to you based on your surfing and email traffic and habits.  What is really bothersome is spyware and malware, which Avast does a much better job of detecting than most other virus scanners but you should at least have Spybot Search & Destroy and Ad-Aware installed on your system and run regular scans for what they are designed to do and that is to find and remove spyware and malware.  These programs have periodic file definition updates like virus programs do.  Like Avast, Spybot and Ad-Aware are actually free to use.  There are other highly recommended anti-spyware programs that the others can recommend.

Avast is searching your memory during startup for maliscious programs already loaded into memory.  It is a good idea to let it run its course.  It doesn't take long to scan the memory.

Sometimes during regular scans it may seem to get hung up when in fact it is doing a thorough scan of large files.  My scanner takes for ever to get through some folders in the Windows directory.  Especially for Outlook Express.

[Tipton]

I appreciate the information. I just could not figure out why during a thorough scan that it hung for a long time on zone alarm in my D drive. The only zone alarm on my D drive is a folder with the zone alarm setup exe. If I have Avast set to do a standard scan, and scan within archives, it scans really fast through both my C and D drive.

I do run Ad-Aware on my system to take care of spyware. I am a pretty low risk surfer. Matter of fact I have never had a virus, but have had browser hijackings, and adware on my system.

I really like Avast, and I am using it to replace Norton since my virus defs are up soon, and Norton software is so bloated and full of problems. How well does Avast compare to Norton AV as far as detecting viruses?

Thank You!

Douglas

[Culpeper]

Same here.  Switched to Avast when my PC-Cillin subscription ran out.  Avast has worked well on my machine.

It's hard to tell about Norton vs. Avast.  I used Norton for a year also but switched to PC-Cillin afterwards.  Norton is a giant in the industry and Avast is a market nicher that gives Norton a run for it's money.  Avast has faired well in reviews and Virus Bulletin updates.  Below is a  good independent article on the latest version of Avast from last summer.  Personally, my anti-virus program is the most important software on my machine along with the firewall.  I like the one-on-one contact with the Avast employees and experienced users that are on the board everyday.  You won't find that kind of support with Norton or any of the other big bad anti-virus programs.

Page 19:

http://www.virusbtn.com/magazine/archives/pdf/2003/200307.pdf

[Tipton]

You make a good point! I am hitting the hay, I will mess around with this some more tomorrow.

Douglas

[igor]

What is your machine? (including e.g. the memory size and hard-drive free space)?
It may be possible that if your hard disk is rather full (and heavily fragmented), the unpacking of the archives to the temporary directory may take much more time than usual...

[Tipton]

I am running XP pro service pack one. I have a gig of Corsair ddr400 PC 3200 RAM. I have two 120 gig SATA hard drives. Both have under 5 gig of data on them. This is a new PC, so I am still adding. I keep the system de-fragged with Diskeeper 8. I really have no idea why Avast wants to hang when it gets to my D drive. Like I said it does finish the scan, but hangs for awhile on my D drive. This only happens when "thorough" scan is selected.

Douglas

[igor]

OK, it seems you have plenty of free disk space
You can try to scan the particular directories (of the D drive) only - maybe you find the one that causes the slowdown. Then, you can go inside and repeat it... it's possible that you discover the file/folder that causes it actually.

[Tipton]

Thanks for the replys on this. I guess I shouldn't say that Avast hangs when it scans my D drive. I watched it today, and it flys right through all my different folders that contain various software downloads. It slows to a crawl when it gets to my ghost images, when I have it set to do a "thorough scan". I know it is still doing something because the hard drive light is still on. A standard scan, even with scan within archives selected goes really fast in my D drive, just not when thorough is selected. I was thinking since my D drive is actually 5 gig counting the ghost images, maybe thats why it takes so long. When it gets to the ghost images with "thorough" scan selected, maybe it is picking through each image, and there is alot of data in the ghost images? Just a thought.

Douglas

[Lisandro]

Your thought makes sense: the bigger is the file more time avast! will take to scan it and, in some cases, un-packing and scanning. But I think, tomorrow, igor could say something to us  

[Tipton]

Ok, I did a little more research on this. I scanned just my folder with my ghost images and watched. I think it isn't hanging at all. I just think because ghost images are compressed files that are pretty big, it just takes awhile on thorough scan. I watched as the different titles of my images appeared, and the smaller ghost images did not take as long as the larger ones. So I think it is scanning fine, just taking awhile on my ghost images because of the size. A few of them are over a gig each in size. Anyway, I appreciate your comments on this!

Douglas

[igor]

I guess you are right. When you select the thorough scan, the whole files are checked (in the normal scan, only the "important" parts). So, even if the scanning didn't take any time, the file has to be read at least.