Author Topic: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"  (Read 27941 times)

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Malkor

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Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« on: April 09, 2008, 01:26:07 AM »
Whenever I upgraded Avast! Home to 4.8 (and uninstalled and reinstalled just to make sure by Avast! support) it skips over the "System Volume Information" whenever I scan the system.  I always do a thorough scan with archived files checked.  I also notice that it skips from 29% to 57% whenever it goes from Documents and Settings to Program Files and goes from 79% to 100% whenever it finishes scanning.

However if I do a boot scan it works perfectly fine and scans all files with the percentage going up steadily.

Any thoughts?

Online DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #1 on: April 09, 2008, 01:33:19 AM »
Well the system volume information folder can be absolutely huge unless you restrict its size in the system restore. I have seen it balloon to over 1.5GB. The progress isn't a precision tool and I think it updates after folders, so that may account for the jump.

There is nothing in the program to make it skip the system volume information folder/s unless you specifically exclude it from scans, unwise.

Right click on the folder and see how big it is ?
The boot-time scan I don't think scans all files. I don't see this huge jumps on my system, for one I don't do a thorough scan with archives, life it too short.

Archive (zip, rar, etc.) files are by their nature are inert, you need to extract the files and then you have to run them to be a threat. Long before that happens avast's Standard Shield should have scanned them and before an executable is run that is scanned. Thorough is also by its design very thorough 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.
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Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #2 on: April 09, 2008, 01:40:26 AM »
By default the folder is locked, although the size is set up to 3433MB.

Offline igor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #3 on: April 09, 2008, 11:01:22 AM »
Are you saying the previous version (4.7) of avast! scanned this folder even from Windows for you, but now (4.8) it doesn't - or you don't know if anything has changed?

Are you logged on as an administrator, or as an ordinary user?

Online DavidR

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #4 on: April 09, 2008, 01:52:35 PM »
By default the folder is locked, although the size is set up to 3433MB.

I would suggest you recover some of this disk space, and reduce the size. You may also consider setting a new clean restore point and clearing the old restore points, obviously when you are happy that things are right with your current setup.
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Rick F

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #5 on: April 09, 2008, 02:41:17 PM »
David makes a good suggestion.  I just lowered the amount I allowed for "Sys Restore" on my XP box to about 2% from 12%. It freed up over 2 Gig of HDD space. The default was 12% or about 28 Gig on my 250 Gig HDD.  WAY TOO much stuff was being saved.  It's suggested that it be set for around 1 gig -- but not less than 500 meg.  Here's a good link if interested:

Keeping System Restore Healthy:
 http://bertk.mvps.org/html/healthy.html
Quote
Adjust the Disk Space Used (or data store) by System Restore. By default System Restore will use 12% disk space for most size drives. With new larger drives the data store can get quite large, which has been know to cause problems in System Restore. Setting the data store to just under 1GB should be adequate. Note: Reducing the data store size will purge the oldest restore points on a FIFO (first in first out) bases and leave as many recent restore points as the new size will allow. Restore points over 90 days are purged automatically by default.

Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2008, 07:43:55 PM »
Are you saying the previous version (4.7) of avast! scanned this folder even from Windows for you, but now (4.8) it doesn't - or you don't know if anything has changed?

Are you logged on as an administrator, or as an ordinary user?

I'm the only user on the machine in question, but other multi-user machines I am set as administrator.  Yes, Avast! 4.7 scanned the folder, but 4.8 will not (only under boot time scan it will).



I would suggest you recover some of this disk space, and reduce the size. You may also consider setting a new clean restore point and clearing the old restore points, obviously when you are happy that things are right with your current setup.

Good point, which I can easily do on my computer, but family machines I opt to leave all points in because, from time to time, they bring me the machine with problems a few weeks later than I would like.  My workstation only is equipped with a 30GB drive (which is not upgradeable above 40GB under normal specifications) which shouldn't be much of a problem when it comes to large sizes.  On external drives I disable it in its entirety because it is quite useless when some points are system specific.

I went ahead and tried it on a few other computers and it has the same symptoms.
« Last Edit: April 09, 2008, 07:46:21 PM by Malkor »

Offline igor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #7 on: April 09, 2008, 08:25:19 PM »
Interesting... what operating system is that?

Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #8 on: April 09, 2008, 08:30:33 PM »
Interesting... what operating system is that?


Windows XP Home SP2 by Hewlett Packard and Windows XP Professional OEM SP2 (using IBM serial).

Offline igor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #9 on: April 10, 2008, 11:12:51 AM »
Try the following, please:
Download File Monitor, run it and set a filter (Ctrl+L) to *ashquick*  (those asterisks included)
Then, rightclick the "System Volume Information" folder in a file manager and choose "Scan" (alternatively, you may use ashQuick.exe from avast! installation folder: ashQuick.exe "c:\System Volume Information" ).
What does File Monitor show afterwards?

Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #10 on: April 11, 2008, 07:49:53 PM »
I didn't need to download the File Monitor for the quick scan to test System Volume Information.

Offline Lisandro

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #11 on: April 11, 2008, 07:53:05 PM »
I didn't need to download the File Monitor for the quick scan to test System Volume Information.
No, but Igor needs the information to troubleshoot what's going wrong with your system...
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Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #12 on: April 12, 2008, 07:21:24 AM »
As far as I know, there is nothing wrong with my ThinkPad.

Assuming that Avast! scans in alphabetical order, it has skipped "System Volume Information" on two other machines.  The HP which I mentioned and a Toshiba Satellite running Vista SP1.

All three systems are laptops, but I don't think Avast! distinguishes between desktops and laptops.

Note: The Vista machine blocks access to the folder when I try to scan it manually.

Offline alanrf

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #13 on: April 12, 2008, 07:27:59 AM »
Every weekly scan (I use ashquick.exe) has terminated for a couple of years now (through all versions of avast) with:

N:\System Volume Information

I followed the request from igor (but I already keep the very useful Filemon on my system) and it clearly shows that the folder is scanned.  It is not clear to me why you appear reluctant to comply with the request. 

Malkor

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Re: Avast 4.8 skips "System Volume Information"
« Reply #14 on: April 12, 2008, 07:34:45 AM »
The Quick Scan sees the System Volume Information perfectly, I'm referring to the ashSimpl.exe.