Author Topic: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...  (Read 16411 times)

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Offline Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #15 on: March 01, 2011, 02:37:23 PM »
Guys, just one short thought: what kind of drive is the H-drive? Internal? What size? What age? What type?

If it's a relatively new drive, then it might well be a 4k-format drive. When you need to read a lot of data from that one on a Win XP system (like a virus scan does), it is crucial that it had been partitioned correctly. (E.g. Western Digital offers a special tool to do so, even afterwards the initial partiotioning) The WinXP own partitioning will not do so by default!
If you fail to align the partition correctly, performance will break down extremely.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/04/01/the-facts-4k-advanced-format-hard-disks/2

A quote from above link (page 6):
"One thing that hit us while testing was how slow the new EARS disk was after installing Windows XP before running the WD Align utility. The installation took notably longer than usual, and the disk ground to a complete halt when tried to install the chipset drivers upon the completion of the OS install. Rebooting and running the WD Align straightaway cured the issue, and we didn't need the software at all after that. Every time a new partition was created, the WD Align utility had to be run, but at least it only had to be run the once, and not continually as a background service."
« Last Edit: March 01, 2011, 02:49:36 PM by Zyndstoff »
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Saito S

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #16 on: March 03, 2011, 08:16:19 AM »
So... some mixed results. 

CCleaner ran without a hitch; I ran both the normal and registry cleaners.  MBAM, though... different story.  I ran a "full" scan of my C drive, and that went fine, though it did find 2 infected files (more on that below).  However, when I tried to run the scan on the H drive, it went REALLY slow as I expected, and could not finish.  On Tuesday night, and then again tonight, it made it about an hour in (at which point, it had scanned 50,000+ "objects"), and then the program just hung forever, ultimately needing to be closed with task manager.  So, whatever is up with the H drive is confounding not only Avast, but MBAM, too.    :P

Haven't tried Puran yet, so I'll give that a whirl.  SafeSurf, here is a screen of the finished results after the MBAM scan of C:
http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/4898/mbam3111.jpg
and the log:
http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/6734/mbamtextlog3111.jpg



As for this:
Guys, just one short thought: what kind of drive is the H-drive? Internal? What size? What age? What type?

If it's a relatively new drive, then it might well be a 4k-format drive. When you need to read a lot of data from that one on a Win XP system (like a virus scan does), it is crucial that it had been partitioned correctly. (E.g. Western Digital offers a special tool to do so, even afterwards the initial partiotioning) The WinXP own partitioning will not do so by default!
If you fail to align the partition correctly, performance will break down extremely.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/storage/2010/04/01/the-facts-4k-advanced-format-hard-disks/2

A quote from above link (page 6):
"One thing that hit us while testing was how slow the new EARS disk was after installing Windows XP before running the WD Align utility. The installation took notably longer than usual, and the disk ground to a complete halt when tried to install the chipset drivers upon the completion of the OS install. Rebooting and running the WD Align straightaway cured the issue, and we didn't need the software at all after that. Every time a new partition was created, the WD Align utility had to be run, but at least it only had to be run the once, and not continually as a background service."
As far as I recall, I used only the standard Windows partitioning on the drive.  But I got the drive quite a while ago (at least seven or eight months), and - until these slowdown issues that started last week - have had no trouble with it.  I must admit I have not taken the time yet to do any more research on 4k-format drives, something I'm unfamiliar with, nor do I know if this drive is one or not (a quick search on WD's site didn't reveal anything).  But it's probably not a bad idea to put up this info anyway, so: it's a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB internal drive, 3.5", model # WD1000LSRTL. 

I did try Dragon NaturallySpeaking out for the first time right before all this started... the program worked decently well, but was a resource hog and tended to be crashy.  I don't know if that has anything to do with this or not (the program, which was on H, was already uninstalled before I made my first post here), but the timing is awfully suspicious. 

SafeSurf

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #17 on: March 03, 2011, 08:26:25 AM »
Well, at least we know you had malware on your C:/drive.  We still don't know what's on the rest of your machine.  :P

Give Puran a try.  After that, give that you found malware, I'd like you to check the information on the first post of this thread under Virus/Worms for you to check your machine for malware: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53253.0

Follow the directions for obtaining the OTL logs (save them as ANSI and not Unicode).  When the OTL scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt.  Post the two (2) OTL log as an attachment (Additional Options > Attach > Browse (the logs will be on your desktop > Post). 

After you post and get back to me how the Puran defrag went, then I may need to refer you to our malware expert.  Let me know if you have any questions.  Thanks.

Offline Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #18 on: March 03, 2011, 09:16:03 AM »
Okay, so I found out that your WD10000LSRTL is identical to WD1001FALS which does not use the Advanced Format (4K-format).

So this is definetely not the cause for slow operation.
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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #19 on: March 03, 2011, 09:20:16 AM »
Thanks Zyndstoff for looking into that.  Perhaps we are dealing with malware.

Offline Zyndstoff (aka Steven Gail)

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #20 on: March 03, 2011, 09:23:23 AM »
Thanks Zyndstoff for looking into that.  Perhaps we are dealing with malware.

Yes, that may well be. It would be strange though to slow down just a secondary drive?
It could also be a symptom of dying hardware...
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Saito S

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #21 on: March 12, 2011, 11:31:46 PM »
Well... been leaving this thread alone a little longer than I meant to.  It's been an insane week.

So, here's the situation now.  As I mentioned, Avast and Malwarebytes both gave up before being able to finish scanning the H drive (Avast pronounced itself done, but clearly hadn't actually scanned the drive; MBAM just froze).  Windows defrag and disk error-checking suffered similar fates.  Puran, however... well, I'm not sure HOW to characterize it's performance.  It hasn't given up, so that's good.  Note "hasn't" instead of "didn't": yes, it's STILL GOING.
http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/3292/puranhdrivedefrag.jpg

That screenshot was taken ten minutes ago.  It's been on "1%" on the "Filling Gaps" process for days.  But it's not frozen; it IS moving from one file to the next, continuing to work... it's just doing it at a legendarily slow pace.  

I had Puran defrag the C drive first, just to test it out.  It finished the entire thing in a reasonable amount of time, a few hours as I recall.  So then I pointed it at H and started it up again.  The initial defragging process on H took a lot longer; almost three days.  But that's NOTHING compared to this "Filling Gaps" process.  

So... what should I do?  Surely, the next step cannot be to simply wait this out.  At this pace, it could take literally months to finish unless it speeds up at some point.  Clearly, something is SERIOUSLY wrong with this drive... but what?  Is there something else I can do?  Should I let Puran continue, or just stop it since this eternal scan probably isn't going to be worth anything?  Is there something I can do to specifically check for physical damage to the drive?  

Kind of at a bit of a loss here...   :-\

One other question: just out of curiosity, and because through all of this I'd like to increase my own level of expertise when it comes to troubleshooting this stuff: Zyndstoff, how exactly DID you determine that my drive doesn't use the 4k-format?  I couldn't find anything about it on the WD site (actually, I couldn't find my drive at all, by the exact model number; I seem to recall that at the time I bought it, the same thing happened.  The model number on mine seems to just be the "retail store" version of the one on their site, since they are the same spec wise, as you mentioned). 
« Last Edit: March 12, 2011, 11:35:20 PM by Saito S »

doktornotor

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #22 on: March 12, 2011, 11:41:55 PM »
Well, I would suggest to download the HDD diagnostic utility from WD, burn the image to CD, boot from it and let it check the drive. (Before you start, you could with another SATA cable first because the diagnostic takes quite some time.)

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WD1001FALS&x=15&y=11

Saito S

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #23 on: March 14, 2011, 02:56:00 AM »
Well, I would suggest to download the HDD diagnostic utility from WD, burn the image to CD, boot from it and let it check the drive. (Before you start, you could with another SATA cable first because the diagnostic takes quite some time.)

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WD1001FALS&x=15&y=11
Do what with a SATA cable...?

As for that tool... thing is, I'm familiar with the concept of disk images, but that's about it.  I know nothing about how it works, or what exactly I need to do, and the user manual on the download page is busted (it's a PDF that just gives me this "the file is damaged and could not be repaired" message).  Dunno what kind of instructions are contained in the program.  But according to the site, I will need to reboot my computer to install the thing anyway, which brings me to my next question.

I assume restarting the machine would mean that the Puran defrag of H would need to be stopped entirely, meaning that if I wanted to do it again later I'd have to start over.  Is there ANY point to letting it continue to run?  Any advantage to trying to let it finish, or should I just stop it?  I'm inclined to just stop it, at this point; as I said, at the rate it's going, I'll be lucky if it's done by June.  Simply waiting for the results and then proceeding with further diagnostic/repair efforts from there is not an option.  So, what say you all?  Time to stop it and move on to other steps?

doktornotor

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #24 on: March 14, 2011, 05:50:40 AM »
Do what with a SATA cable...?

Replace it with another one.

As for that tool... thing is, I'm familiar with the concept of disk images, but that's about it.  I know nothing about how it works, or what exactly I need to do, and the user manual on the download page is busted (it's a PDF that just gives me this "the file is damaged and could not be repaired" message).  Dunno what kind of instructions are contained in the program.  But according to the site, I will need to reboot my computer to install the thing anyway, which brings me to my next question.

No image. Burn the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD)" bootable ISO to CD, boot from it and run the HDD diagnostic. Forget about Puran, this is not caused by fragmentation and running it won´t help in any way.

Saito S

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #25 on: March 18, 2011, 04:31:00 AM »
Ah, I misunderstood you at first, but that was a good suggestion on the SATA cable, since I didn't think of that myself.  But unfortunately, that wasn't it either... putting in a new cable didn't change anything.

As for this program... where do I find the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic"?  I downloaded the program from the link, but couldn't find anything like that.  So, if anyone can point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.   :)

SafeSurf

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #26 on: March 18, 2011, 07:21:15 AM »
I agree to stop the Puran defrag at this point.  It appears that you are having a HDD issue.  Try doktornotor's suggestions to see if this helps.  Thanks.

doktornotor

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #27 on: March 18, 2011, 07:59:39 AM »
As for this program... where do I find the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic"?  I downloaded the program from the link, but couldn't find anything like that.  So, if anyone can point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.   :)

You need to burn the image to CD/DVD (as image, do not burn the ISO file itself as in just adding the file to CD - it will be useless), boot from the CD and run the diagnostics. Read your favorite CD burning application help for instructions.

Saito S

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #28 on: March 18, 2011, 09:01:16 PM »
As for this program... where do I find the "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic"?  I downloaded the program from the link, but couldn't find anything like that.  So, if anyone can point me in the right direction, it'd be much appreciated.   :)

You need to burn the image to CD/DVD (as image, do not burn the ISO file itself as in just adding the file to CD - it will be useless), boot from the CD and run the diagnostics. Read your favorite CD burning application help for instructions.
Burn WHAT to CD? 

What I got from the website you linked to was "Acronis True Image WD Edition".  What exactly do I burn to CD?  The entire program?  I cannot find anything called "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic" (or anything with "Lifeguard" in the title, for that matter). 

As for a CD burning program, I don't even have one.  All I ever burn is music (I just use iTunes) or straight data, in which case I just use the Windows CD burning tool.  I've never NEEDED to do anything more complex than that.  The Acronis program itself has options to "create bootable rescue media"; should I just use that?  What's the difference between "creating bootable media" on a CD, vs. "creating an ISO disk image"?  Also, the Acronis help files (which don't have very detailed explanations of the various options) make it sound like creating an ISO image can ONLY be done on a DVD specifically, not a CD (I don't have the ability to burn DVDs at the moment, only CDs). 

Basically, I cannot stress enough that this is all completely new territory for me. 

doktornotor

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Re: Having issues trying to scan folders with avast! 6...
« Reply #29 on: March 18, 2011, 09:14:56 PM »
Last try:

1. Go to http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?modelno=WD1001FALS&x=15&y=11
2. Click on the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (CD) link
3. On the next page, click on the Download button next to Diag504fCD.iso   
4. Once downloaded, burn the downloaded image using whatever suitable application, such as ImgBurn.
5. Reboot your PC, boot from the CD, run the diagnostics.

If you can't follow the above, then sorry but I really don't have the patience nor the time to explain over and over again such simple instructions like how to click on a link on a website to download a file.