Silly newb questions

[Groveldog]

I'm using Avast for the first time, after reading many great reviews, and am scanning as I type.

I've previously used mostly Norton's (don't hate me) and the first thing I wanted to see with Avast is it's "virus list" - the list of known viruses. I always found with Norton's that my list didn't include the latest well-known viruses, so I would like to see what my Avast program is looking for.


Oooh, nice one, two trojans just found!


Also, is there a way to see how long the virus scanner has to go before it is finished? You know, as a percentage or something?


Feel free to roll your eyes is these are easily ansered questions, but I have searched and found nothing on it, and played around with the program a bit. I would very much appreciate an answer in regard to the list, if only so I can feel smug that I have replaced Norton's.  

[techie101]

Groveldog,

Questions are only silly when you don't ask them!
You can view the over 22000 virus definitions by right clicking on the main skin and going to Virus definitions.
Clear the search box and use * instead.
Then do a search.  The program will list all the viruses that Avast will offer protection, and the type of virus..that is: Worm, Trojan, In the Wild etc.

You are not alone in your comment that Avast is a superior product.  When I first used it, it found a virus that had been embeded in an unopended email that had been on my system for 2 years.  McAfee and Norton never found it.

The best feature of Avast is the Auto-update.  I never miss an update anymore, nor do I have to wonder if my app is up to date.

Hope the info helps.

Good Luck.

[Gu3]

Groveldog,

Techie101 already answered the hard questions, so let me take a stab at the second question:

It doesn't appear so.  I suspect it would be possible to do something like what you suggest, but not very practical in implementation terms.

Unless I miss my guess, Avast! simply starts at one end of the drive, and starts cranking away, scanning files that meet its' criteria as it encounters them.  To do what you suggest, one would have to know how many files met the criteria in advance, then compare that count to the scan count, and thus display a percentage of what had been accomplished.

So, this would require:
1 Pass to count the files and then another pass to run the scan.

In terms of processor time, this would be insignificant, but you'd then have to address how to handle changes in content during scan, and adjusting (or restarting) your scan accordingly...

Or so I surmise.  I could be completely off base here though, it just seems that that is the way the scanner works....

Oh, and don't worry about being a NortonAV ex user.  I just switched yesterday myself.  And while some things about Norton were superior (multiple account support), I find that the AVAST! Developers are well on their way to fixing that lack!  (And as is AVAST! can support multiple POP accounts, just not multiple SMTP accounts...I can live with that!)

Also, I feel FREE of paying the tithe to Norton for "upgrades".  Now if I could just solve for Norton WinDoctor, I'd be a happy camper! <grin>

Scott...

[Groveldog]

Thank you both!

*lol* I finally found the menu and virus definitions. I thought the button for the menu on my blue skin was just part of the design. It's a bit subtle for the likes of me!


Great program! I'll be spreading the word. Lordy, it's like a cult.  

[igor]

I also think that in general, the percentage estimate would have to be done 2 pass. And I'm not even sure whether the first pass would be "insignificant in terms of processor time". Well, speaking of real CPU usage, then yes, but otherwise browsing the disk might take quite a while...

As for the changes of the content during the scan... well, I think we would be happy with an estimate, not an exact predition, so I don't think monitoring the changes would be necessary.

For special cases (as e.g. scanning the whole partition) some very rough estimate might be based on the disk space occupied by the files (and summing the files found during the scan). However, when scanning of archives is turned on... then even this estimate might be completely wrong.

[Gu3]

Igor,

Hmmm, you are probably right.  I was basing my comment on some perl I wrote a while back that processed files in a directory, I found that if I didn't write anything to the screen, the glob and process was really really fast.  However that certainly wasn't a disk wide process, and now that I think about it, I never actually checked the processor usage.  One wonders though.

Yeah, you are right about content changes, as you point out, they should be irrelevant during the period of the filecount scan, and if you used that to give you an "estimate" of the total number and used that as a measuring stick, that should work.

I was thinking of the disk space thing last night...  The result of doing that ought to work, especially if you used it as a progress meter without any sort of percentages or "value" attached.  In other words, just progress the progress meter strictly by the amount of used disk space checked.  This of course means it might progress really slowly, then jump forward when it hits a bunch of directories with nothing but txt files, and absolutely crawl (relatively speaking of course) when it runs through a directory of archives...

Fundamentally, the same procedure ought to work on folder based and individual file scans, although the amount of code required to produce a bar that only lasts for a millisecond or two on individual files and small folders might not be worth the effort...

Ho humm!  Interesting to think about though!
Thanks.
Scott...

[Vlk]

Thank you guys... sounds like an interesting exercise for my dev team...

Maybe in avast! 5

Vlk

[Gu3]

<grin>.

You're quite welcome.  Its' made me think though.  I might play around with some PERL or C++ code to see how long it takes to run through my 60GB of disk space using some sort of recursive tree call and globs coupled with a filter...

If I count the files, then use that as an "estimate", I can get an idea of how long it would take me to generate such a list.  Then I can build a simple program that goes out and does the same thing, however instead of just counting, it will drop the filename scanned in a file, and whip a % out onto the screen for every X files it processes.

hmmm, oh wait.  Perhaps I can write a perl script that calls the command line scanner....that might give me a better idea of how long it takes...  hmmmmm.  Can the command line scanner handle archives?

Of course using the command line scanner (even from a script) would be slower than  using an OS level scanner, but it might be a neat trick...<grin>.

Heck, I don't even know if my PERL skills are up to handling such a task... its' been awhile....LOL

See Ya!