Author Topic: Loading virus signature database before scanning  (Read 1330 times)

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Offline hm17

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Loading virus signature database before scanning
« on: April 03, 2020, 11:25:52 PM »
Hello every one, can I ask a question? Does Avast Antivirus need to load virus signature database before scanning? because as I can see, it comes to scanning phase very fast after I initiate scanning.
Thank you, every one.
Have a good day
 

Offline lukor

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Re: Loading virus signature database before scanning
« Reply #1 on: April 03, 2020, 11:32:11 PM »
Hi hm17,
I am not sure if this answers your question, but Avast always keeps its virus database loaded - it has a service exactly for that (besides other things) because it almost constantly scans things as you work on the computer. This service process also connects to our Streaming update server and every few minutes accepts a new package of signatures (and sometimes also fixes to the previously used ones) and it integrates all these tiny updates of the database in its memory.

Offline hm17

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Re: Loading virus signature database before scanning
« Reply #2 on: April 03, 2020, 11:43:15 PM »
Thank you, That's exactly what I want to know. And the service for that is AvastSvc.exe? because there are some Avast processes that are always running and I just can't find information about what each of them really do.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Loading virus signature database before scanning
« Reply #3 on: April 03, 2020, 11:50:03 PM »
That rather depends on what scan you are running, as far as I can recall the only scan that downloads some virus signatures (and not sure if it is downloading full database), that is the boot-time scan.  This scan is somewhat different as is user initiated not automatic.

If you have the computer connected to the internet and you have the Virus Definitions update set to Automatic (default setting) and you are also getting the streaming updates (roughly every 3 minutes when you are connected snd using the computer).

So the virus definitions would/should be very up to date and not really need to update before a scan unless the database hasn't been updated for some time.

Check out the virus defs folder and you will get an idea of how frequent/recent they (regular and streaming updates) are.  You will see regular VPS Updates and ........_stream, there are currently 251 mini updates in my current stream
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Offline hm17

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Re: Loading virus signature database before scanning
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2020, 12:08:45 AM »
thank you, for me it is about 4 minutes