Full Virus scan hangs

[dss_cottage]

Can anyone point me to a possible solution?

I'm running Windows XP Home and Avast 4.8 Home Edition.

I have the traditional hard drive as drive C: as well as an external USB hard drive as drive E:. When I run a full virus scan, the scan hangs while scanning one specific folder on the C: drive. If I stop the hung scan and scan that specific directory, it completes and there is no virus.

If I disconnect the external HD and scan the C: drive only, the full scan completes normally.

If I reconnect the external HD and go into Windows Explorer, right click and scan only the E: drive, the scan runs for a long time (apparently scanning the entire drive). However, it hangs in the directory E:\SystemVolumeInformation\MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase. As a result, I get no log of the scan.

Any ideas?

[DavidR]

What is your firewall (strange I know), my guess is zone alarm ?
If so see below.

Personally I don't think you should need to disconnect the external HDD.

####
Slow Scan or Frozen Scan & Zone Alarm:
There have been some issues with zone alarm in the past and personally I don't feel it is a particularly good firewall, becoming rather bloated and the free version crippled in the strength of its outbound protection (in the hope you will buy the pro version). One of these problems relates to the tracking.log file located in the c:\system volume information folder/s (more than one if you have more than one partition). By excluding this file from on-demand scans seems to break this issue with ZA and the tracking.log file.

- avast! Program Settings > Exclusions > Add and enter or copy and paste the following bold text
?:\system volume information\tracking.log.
The ? is a single character wildcard which is used for the drive letter, this allows for the possibility of more than one :\system volume information folder, so you don't have to have two or more entries in the exclusions list.

Try adding that exclusion and see if that works by doing another scan.

[dss_cottage]

Thanks DavidR,

You hit the nail on the head!

However it was interesting. When I excluded "E:\system volume information\tracking.log", a scan of the USB external drive (using Win Explorer/right click/scan) completed successfully. However, when I attempted to run a full scan of both fixed drives (right click Avast system tray icon/Start Avast antivirus), it hung again on the directory "C:\sj675" which is the directory immediately before "C:\SystemVolumeInformation". I tried to exclude "C:\sj675\" but Avast separated that entry into 2 exclusions (C and :\sj675)? Instead, I excluded "C:\system volume information\tracking.log" and low and behold, it now works!!!!!

I'm always interesting in learning so I'd appreciate a link to any information that will help me to understand why this happened. If this takes too much time, don't bother. I'm just happy that it's fixed.

Thank-you again!
Cheers,
dss_cottage

[Lisandro]

I tried to exclude "C:\sj675\"

I wouldn't do it so... are you sure this is a legit folder with clean files on it?

[DavidR]

Thanks DavidR,

You hit the nail on the head!

However it was interesting. When I excluded "E:\system volume information\tracking.log", a scan of the USB external drive (using Win Explorer/right click/scan) completed successfully. However, when I attempted to run a full scan of both fixed drives (right click Avast system tray icon/Start Avast antivirus), it hung again on the directory "C:\sj675" which is the directory immediately before "C:\SystemVolumeInformation".
<snip>

You're welcome.

Basically had you done as I suggested by placing a ? instead of a fixed partition letter at the front of the path you wouldn't have had to create two exclusions.

- avast! Program Settings > Exclusions > Add and enter or copy and paste the following bold text
?:\system volume information\tracking.log.
The ? is a single character wildcard which is used for the drive letter, this allows for the possibility of more than one :\system volume information folder, so you don't have to have two or more entries in the exclusions list.

The folder it stops in isn't always the one that is causing the problem but the next one and that could have contained the troublesome tracking.log. So no need to exclude that C:\sj675\ folder, which I think is created by the HP ScanJet printer installation, etc..

[dss_cottage]

You're welcome.

Basically had you done as I suggested by placing a ? instead of a fixed partition letter at the front of the path you wouldn't have had to create two exclusions.

Sorry. I misread your note.

Thanks again

[dss_cottage]

I tried to exclude "C:\sj675\"

I wouldn't do it so... are you sure this is a legit folder with clean files on it?

Yup. It's a folder with clean files. It contains the programs and drivers for my HP Scanjet. I've had this folder on this and two other computers with no problems. I also scanned this folder with Avast before trying to exclude it.

Thank-you

[Lisandro]

before trying to exclude it.

Sorry dss, my fault.
You don't have to exclude this folder from scanning.

[abbeden]

the scan runs for a long time (apparently scanning the entire drive). However, it hangs in the directory E:\SystemVolumeInformation\MountPointManagerRemoteDatabase. As a result, I get no log of the scan.

Any ideas?

I have the same problem, with this same directory on my all my partitioned drives.  The virus scan hangs at this directory, but when I go into "explore" and click on the directory I get an error message that access is denied.  So I don't know what is in it.  However, from the previous posts, I did have Zone Alarm and recently tried to delete it and thought I had.  So if this is to do with Zone Alarm, can I safely delete it? or maybe it won't let me, and if so, how would I get rid of it, if it were safe to do so.
many thanks in advance

[Lisandro]

I suggest you disable System Restore on Windows ME, XP or Vista. After disabling you can enable it again.
This will delete all old restore points, new ones will be created, but you'll get rid of that files.

[abbeden]

thanks Tech, I did this, so hopefully it is ok.  The directory is now whitened out, and is read only, and says access is denied.  Is it a windows thing that is necessary on every drive? 

[Lisandro]

The access is denied by Windows. It's ok.
Yeah, it must exist in all partitions (drivers) that Windows can make a restore.

[tusenkonstnar]

Im running WinXP SP3 and Avast Home edition 4.8.
Every time I scan my external USB HDD Avast suddenly freeze after 342 scanned files (has been different files but it freezes), this only applies when I do my on demand scan with the toughest setting.
I do not have Zone Alarm or any other 3:rd part FireWall - I'm only using windows own Firewall.

P.s All the first times I saw this phenomena it was in my AllwaySync folder but right now I've got it in the root.


How can I solve this, any ideas?

BR