Really long scan time

[JimV]

I'm running the home (free) version on a Toshiba (P4 2.2 GHz) laptop whose OS is XP SP3, and a full scan of the 120 Gb hard drive takes a long time to complete (last weekend's run took over 9-1/2 hours to complete, though no problematic items were found).  There are 6 partitions which each have between 20-50% free space, and the RAM is maxed at 2Gb.  I also have a Dell desktop (P4, 2.8 GHz) with a multi-partition 250 Gb drive and an external 500 Gb hard drive that will run through its scan (covering both the internal and externals drives) in about 1-1/2 hours.  Is there something I can tweak in the avast! settings for the laptop that would reduce the time required to complete a full scan, or better identify what things might be causing such a slow run-to-completion process in its scans?

[DavidR]

You don't say whhat type of scan that you are doing so it is impossible to suggest anything ?

I suspect that you are doing a thorough scan with archives, at least I hope that is the case.

Thorough is also by its design very thorough (it scans all files) and perhaps a little overkill for routine use, were a Standard scan without archives should be adequate. 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.

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.

[Tarq57]

Was any other antivirus installed on the laptop prior to Avast?

[JimV]

Thanks very much for the responses, and I've now got it to an acceptable level of functionality.

DavidR - You called it correctly, as the lengthy scan parameters were set for both 'thorough' and 'archive' checking, though I must have done that under the presumption such a configuration would take less time.  I reset the toggle to 'standard' and unchecked the 'archive' box, and it ran through this weekend in just under 3 hours.  Since I normally set the various scans on my different machines to run overnight during the weekend, I'll kick the avast! scan off on Saturday evening.

Tarq57 - I previously had NAV set up on this laptop before switching to avast! about 6 months ago, but took much care to remove it completely before installing avast! (i.e., uninstall from Control Panel, run Norton Removal Tool, use Windows Explorer to track down and delete any drive folders with "Symantec" or "Norton" in their name reference, and finally edit the registry to track down and delete all subkeys if appropriate or subkey values which had a "Symantec" or "Norton" reference).

Thanks again for the feedback and advice.

[DavidR]

You're welcome.

NAV can be a real pig to remove fully.
A link worth looking at, which is a program removal tool that can remove the remnants of a number of different Norton Programs:
Removing your Norton program using SymNRT
Or ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/removal_tools/Norton_Removal_Tool.exe