Author Topic: Help understanding scan items  (Read 3692 times)

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Nikilet

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Help understanding scan items
« on: May 24, 2011, 10:42:46 PM »
Yesterday the Avast scan found a number of files assoc. with Avast, stating "the system could not find the path identified." I wasn't alarmed. But again today the scan found those items plus quite a few more. Is this normal? I wanted to post those two logs here but I can't find any way to do that. Are these logs stored somewhere in my hard drive or are they only viewable within the program?

Is there a place where these scan logs are stored?
« Last Edit: May 25, 2011, 12:06:56 AM by Nikilet »

Offline DavidR

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #1 on: May 24, 2011, 11:25:34 PM »
- Nothing to worry about, those are old virus definitions folders and avast is doing some housecleaning to keep the size used on the hard disk to a minimum. This just happens to have occurred between the time you started the scan and it reaching that old defs folder.

The other thing if it has happened every day, it means you are running an on-demand scan every day, which on a resident on-access antivirus is a much depreciated requirement.
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Nikilet

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #2 on: May 25, 2011, 12:06:07 AM »
I wouldn't have worried, except that it did this on 5-13, and then again the past two days. Previously it happened, I believe, about once a month. As a rule, I don't run on-demand scans. I have it scheduled to run a full scan every day at 1 pm.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #3 on: May 25, 2011, 12:12:05 AM »
You are more likely to bump into this the more frequently you run an on-demand, personally daily is overkill.

- With a resident on-access antivirus like avast, the need for frequent on-demand scans is much depreciated. For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that would be otherwise be dormant or inert. If they were active files then the on-access file system shield would be scanning them before being created, modified, opened or executed.

I have avast set to do a scheduled weekly Quick scan, set at a time and day that I know the computer will be on. If for some reason my system wasn't on, no big deal I will catch up on the next scheduled scan.
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SafeSurf

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #4 on: May 25, 2011, 12:24:08 AM »
As a side note, you may also want to update Avast to the current version (according to your Signature) to 6.0.1125 either via the Avast GUI or do a clean install, and update Firefox to 4.0.1 which is more secure.  ;)

Nikilet

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #5 on: May 25, 2011, 07:13:35 PM »
Thank you DavidR: I've changed my scheduling to once a week. In what case would you do a full scan?

SafeSurf: I have the latest version of Avast, always. I just don't go in and change my info like I should. I haven't switched to the new Firefox because there were initially a number of problems I didn't want to have to deal with. I probably should now though.

Offline DavidR

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Re: Help understanding scan items
« Reply #6 on: May 25, 2011, 07:25:23 PM »
Thank you DavidR: I've changed my scheduling to once a week. In what case would you do a full scan?

SafeSurf: I have the latest version of Avast, always. I just don't go in and change my info like I should. I haven't switched to the new Firefox because there were initially a number of problems I didn't want to have to deal with. I probably should now though.

I'm finding it hard to justify an occasion when I would, some might consider it after something unusual/suspect/out of the ordinary on your system; but then again the resident shields should be at work during these incidences, so an on-demand scan may not find anything.

If whatever it is still unnerves you you could run a boot-time scan as that could get round any possible hidden malware.

The avast Quick scan is actually quite efficient as it is essentially only scanning those files which are targets for malware or more at risk of infection and if infected would present an immediate risk. Whilst the Full System Scan does the same it then would be scanning files with a lessor degree of risk or infection, etc.
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