Unexpected full scan occurs

[NewbieAvastUser]

Within the Avast AV GUI, I scheduled a full scan at 5am every morning.  The "Full system scan.txt" report file shows that it took place.  However, when I fired up the laptop from standby at around 9:30pm, Avast started scanning, completing about 100 minutes after.  This too was entered into "Full system scan.txt".  I don't recall, but I might have gotten a dialog box saying that a scan had stopped, and perhaps I was asked to resume.  I don't know why I'd be asked to resume (assuming that it happened), since the report file shows that the 5am scan stopped at 5:56am (almost 1 hour, but much less than the 9:30pm scan)).  The report file shows that the total scanned files, folders and size stats are almost identical to the 9:30pm scan, so I doubt that the 5am scan was interrupted by the machine going into standby.  As well, standby is set to occur after only with 15 minutes of idleness, and I'm assuming that scanning does not constitute idleness.

What would cause an unexpected scan such as the unscheduled 9:30pm scan?

[NewbieAvastUser]

Actually, it *didn't* run last 5am.  It ran on 5am the previous night.  Could the 9:30pm scan that started when I woke the machine simply be a delayed scan from 5am?  Why would it be delayed if I specified that Avast should wake up the system for 5am scan?

P.S.  I ruled out the possibility that another user account scheduled the 9:30pm.  The scheduling panel seems to be common to all accounts.  Changes made via the user1 account will be present when the scheduling panel is accessed from a user2 account.

[SafeSurf]

Can I ask why you are running a Full scan every day?  This really is not needed since Avast is scanning your machine (when it is on) all the time anyway, and to run a Full scan is a bit over kill.  Perhaps running a Quick scan weekly would be more what most people do unless you are going to extremely high risk sites daily.  Do you have on-demand scanner(s) or other security software on this machine as well?  A daily Full scan just seems to be excessive IMO.

[YoKenny]

A daily Full scan just seems to be excessive IMO.

 I have only ran a Full Scan once and that was to see that it worked.
I have run a Quick scan once just to get its log.
The Real-Time shields are quite good especially File System Shield.  

[Daris]

I'm guessing you scheduled a scan earlier and deleted that one or did a few different scan schedules which were not deleted so they ran anyways....sometimes when you schedule a scan and delete it and schedule another one the first one didn't delete.... and still runs at an unspecified time before the new one can start.....Just a guess....

[NewbieAvastUser]

Can I ask why you are running a Full scan every day?  This really is not needed since Avast is scanning your machine (when it is on) all the time anyway, and to run a Full scan is a bit over kill.  Perhaps running a Quick scan weekly would be more what most people do unless you are going to extremely high risk sites daily.  Do you have on-demand scanner(s) or other security software on this machine as well?  A daily Full scan just seems to be excessive IMO.

I'm taking it one step at a time.  First is to setup scheduled scans.  Next, I was going to ask what would be a reasonable level of thoroughness and regularity.

Having said that, however, there are some really disturbing practices out there.  I searched for eggs and cholesterol at one time and the Google hits all got redirected to a site that tried to get me to buy a bogus antimalware.  If the malware were to harvest information, even one day would be plenty.  Or so I assume.  I mean, how much time does it take to harvet info?

[NewbieAvastUser]

A daily Full scan just seems to be excessive IMO.

 I have only ran a Full Scan once and that was to see that it worked.
I have run a Quick scan once just to get its log.
The Real-Time shields are quite good especially File System Shield.  

Well...does that mean you never scan?  I was planning to scale back to two full scans per week, but now I'm wondering if one full scan and one quick scan per week might not be excessive.

[NewbieAvastUser]

I'm guessing you scheduled a scan earlier and deleted that one or did a few different scan schedules which were not deleted so they ran anyways....sometimes when you schedule a scan and delete it and schedule another one the first one didn't delete.... and still runs at an unspecified time before the new one can start.....Just a guess....

I think it's a good attempt of trying to make sense of it.  However, the scan started just as I woke the machine out of standby.  The only scan schedule I've set up (it's truly is the first time I used the Avast scheduler) is 5am rather than 9:30, and it wakes the computer up to do that rather than waiting for the user to wake the computer up.

On a happy note, no scan happened tonight, and the last scan was at 5am as expected.  Maybe the ghost cause will not come back.

[SafeSurf]

I think you now realize from the above posts the reasonable scanning needed.  Most users, do a Quick scan every 1 - 2 weeks; a Full scan once a month if at all; and only do a Boot-time scan when something is found as malware from another scan.  However, everyone is different and this is just a generalization.

Some users use scheduled scans and others don't.  Do what works best for you.  It seems like the 5 AM schedule is now working for you.

Let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns.  Thank you. 

[NewbieAvastUser]

Actually, an unexpected scan started again the moment I woke the laptop up from standby at 7:44am.  I checked "c:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Alwil Software/Avast5/report".  The files "Full system scan.txt" and "BehaviorShield.txt" are both timestamped 7:44am, so I wasn't sure whether the scheduled scan at 5am occured.

Fortunately, I bumbled my way around the GUI and found the panel ScanComputer->ScanLogs, which shows that the 5am scan did not occur this morning.  Hence, it seems that the scan that started at 7:44am was a holdover from 5am.

If this is true, it means the wake-up option in the 5am scheduled scan did not used.  However, I note that the wake-up option says "if in sleep mode".  If I recall correctly, I see the term Sleep Mode used with Windows 7.  This machine, on the other hand, is Windows XP, for which the closest thing to Sleep Mode is Standby.  Does that mean that the wake-up option isn't available for Windows XP?

[Asyn]

This machine, on the other hand, is Windows XP, for which the closest thing to Sleep Mode is Standby. 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/russel_02march25.mspx

[NewbieAvastUser]

This machine, on the other hand, is Windows XP, for which the closest thing to Sleep Mode is Standby. 

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/learnmore/russel_02march25.mspx

That article seems to use the word sleep in a colloquial way.  As the article says, the actual feature names in Windows XP parlance are Standby and Hibernate.  Likewise, if I recall correctly, the actual terminology in Windows 7 is Sleep (or Sleep Mode, or some such).  I'm sure that there is a lot of similarity between Windows XP standby and Windows 7 sleep mode, but doubtlessly, there are differences too (heck, it's a different OS, and many years apart in conceptualization -- the capabilities of processors and the host platform are quite different).  I was wondering if this might be the reason why the Avast doesn't seem to wake the my computer up for its scheduled scan.  Does it target Windows 7 Sleep Mode in such a way that would make it not wake up from XP's standby?  I'm not sure what the GUI designers precisely meant they described the checkbox "wake up...if in sleep mode".  Can anyone clear this up?  Thanks.