I appreciate all the help!! I went ahead and deleted Internet Security using the MCPR tool, I'd done this before, but I thought second time a charm.
It did speed up the scan a little, but stil looking at least three days to do a full scan. I looked at the application and local settings folder and both have many nested copies below the original folder. Internet Security does scan these folders and I think that this is the main reason for the slow. With a little more investigation in the Microsoft website I found that these are not longer used by Windows 7. The folder Appdata takes the place of both of these, Application Data and Local Settings are now just "junctions" for legacy applications that still need these folders and their function is to pass on info to Appdata. Microsoft says that these folders should not be scanned by a virus software, as they are empty and contain no data. I checked their properties and they have 0 bytes. So the questionis why is McAfee scanning them.?
Anyone out there from McAfee know why?
BJ
The home products can't be told to ignore any particular file, folder or area - they scan everything. It's a feature we've been requesting for some time but hasn't been included up until now.
In my experience slow scanning can be caused by many things, hard drive disk errors, encrypted files, folder or drives, lots of compressed files. folders or drives etc. etc.
It looks to me that the "AppData\Roaming" folder is the same as the "Application Data" folder(s), not AppData itself. Deleting the second instance of "Application Data" in each of the numerous paths fixed my scan problems, and still doesn't appear to have any negative effect on any of my programs.
Cheers,
Jim
That's good. By the way a manual "Custom" scan can be tailored a bit to exclude various things.
That's why I never allow a scan to run on a schedule.
Got me on what to do next. I've run disk check, cleaned up all files defraged, and done every other maintenance item I could think of.
The computer is running great, no damaged files, 0% fragmentation, only around 87GB on the disk and Internet Security still takes forever to scan..
Anyone for Norton??
Have you done a disk check? Go to Start Run and enter cmd in XP, in Vista/Windows 7 go to start and enter cmd in the Search box, right-click the cmd above when it appears and select "Run as Administrator".
Type in chkdsk /r then hit the Enter key or if you have more than one disk or partition and need to indicate which volume to check chkdsk C: /r (with the spaces and change C: to whatever the drive letter is).
It'll object saying the volume is in use, proceed at reboot Y/N, type in Y and hit Enter and reboot. Takes a while.
Also if the drive is compressed or you have a lot of zipped files it will take forever because it has to decompress everything in order to scan.
Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 20/04/10 10:14:08 EDT AMFive days? It may be six for me at this point: 49 per cent done, computer on since Saturday morning (Monday afternoon here).
I’ve looked at some of the solutions above. I don’t have any Application Data folders inside other Application Data folders (though I found AppData folders), and I’m AOK on the fragments. I have not run a disk check, which I am hesitant to do at the moment while my computer continues to scan.
It’s running Vista Home Premium. Not sure how to tell you which version of the OS or McAfee I have.
It shouldn't take that long by any means. It may help to know whether or not this is the 2009 version of McAfee which has a square taskbar icon or the 2010+ version which has a shield-shaped icon, also if this is Vista SP2 .. I hope?
You can check the latter by right-clicking Computer on your desktop or in the Start Menu.
If you don't have SP2 you should take steps to get it immediately as it was introduced some time ago and there have been many updates since. For help see HERE.
Long scanning times is often indicative of disk read errors or having many zipped/compressed files on your hard drive, but you may wish to ask Technical Support Chat for help in identifying what's causing it. They can go into your machine if necessary to troubleshoot.
Linked under Useful Links above.
Message was edited by: Ex_Brit on 14/11/10 8:13:38 CST PMThank you, Peter. I have the McAfee with the shield icon, and yes, this is SP2 (thankfully).
I’ll be running that disk check once this is all done—or, in your opinion, shall I terminate the scan?
That's good re: versions as you seem to be up to date.
Do that disk check later, yes. Do you have a lot of zipped folders or have you compressed the drive by any chance as this will prolong the scan considerably?
Are your scans automatic as per a schedule? I ask that because if you choose to do a Custom Scan you can start excluding certain things to see if it makes a difference, zipped files for instance, also any other drives or partitions that you may have.
You could also try unchecking "Scan using minimal resources" which should speed up the scan but, if your machine has low memory or a small CPU, may slow the machine down generally.
Custom Scan is reached as follows:
Double-click the taskbar icon to open SecurityCenter (or right-click and select that)
Click Virus and Spyware Protection to expand
Click Scheduled Scanning and turn it off
Click Home (top right) then Virus and Spyware Protection again
Now click Scan your PC to expand
Click Run a Custom Scan
Tailor your scan there. (Scroll down to see it all)
Each time you want to run a scan you can try different parameters to see what works.
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