Comments on: Norton 360 problems…and a fix.

By: starfallz

starfallz — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:03:45 +0000

I’m amused that NS2010 is a downgrade when it isn’t even 2010 yet.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:29:53 +0000

Very interesting! I had no idea that could be causing my problem. Of course those archive files never change.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:28:35 +0000

I’ve considered that…but I’m such a butterfly: I’m on the net, off and writing, on the net to do some research, off and writing, every few minutes. Welcome, bTw!

By: onewire

onewire — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:49:03 +0000

If I were you I would have a seperate computer computer for writing and one for internet!!! You do not need any anti-virus spyware or adware removal programs, if you do not hook up the writing computer to the internet!!!!!!!

By: Apf

Apf — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:41:18 +0000

If you are using AVG 8.5 open it up by right clicking on the systray icon for AVG. Then you want the navigation links on the left, the middle one should say computer scanner. Then click on the scheduled scan and then “edit scan schedule”. That will give you three tabs. Second on is “what to scan” you want to make sure that “scan infectable files onl” is ticked on. Then save that. Then repeat but select the third tab “what to scan” and you can then specify which folders to scan. So you could just exclude the archive.

By: Apf

Apf — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:31:33 +0000

300,000 should not be to many for it to handle. But I suspect that you may right about the file extensions causing problems. Most av scanners work out what the file type is by reading the first few bytes of the file. E.g. first two bytes of an executable in dos are MZ so when the scanner reads those “magic bytes” it can make some assumptions about what sort of file it is reading. That can also limit the amount of the file it has to read. In the old days, scanner relied on just reading the file extension to decide which template to use to read the file. Shockingly, the bad guys figured out they could get around that by renaming the file extension to something else – interestingly lots of mail scanners in large corp’s still fall for that trick so you can mail executables through without them being picked up.

If the files are static, then you should be able to give avg an exclusion so it doesn’t scan them and that may avoid it getting it’s stack twisted up.

Files don’t have to be large to cause problems. The infamous zip bombs proved that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_bomb Best of those I ever saw was a 24 byte file that would expand to just over 1gb. You could almost see the cpu melt under the load.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:37:11 +0000

THat may be one answer: Remember my matroushka files comment? They also exist on the laptop, AND they contain many, many files with names no longer recognized by Windows (or anything else—remember when we used the .xxx as a project tag, because the program didn’t pay much attention. I have .mem, .prA, .let, you name it, on my hard disk because I’ve always felt worried about leaving those old relics only to dvd backup. Office files aren’t that memory hungry, so I never thought about the file names posing a problem.

By: CJ

CJ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:33:33 +0000

Oh, I’m defragged, but I have some 300,000 files on the laptop. I’m currently trying to clean that up.

By: Jcrow9

Jcrow9 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:59:53 +0000

Walt, laptops use slower HDDs to reduce heat generation. Lower-rpm motors are cooler, and laptops are walking thermal emergencies. Of course, power usage leads to heat, so it’s a fiddlin’ difference I suppose.
#
For laptop users in general, a comment: most laptops have a power usage option–that is, you can choose a power scheme. Typical default is a compromise between battery life and performance (system speed). As many people use a laptop mostly while it is pluged in, this gives away potential performance. Depending on brand, you may have options such as “like a desktop if it’s plugged in, like a laptop if on battery”; I usually choose “full speed regardless” (I’m paraphrasing here, naturally, but the names of the various power schemes will be clear enough to make the choice). If you’re gonna be sitting on a plane for hours, you can always go in and change the scheme to ‘max conserve’ or what have you. But in the meantime, you’ll be getting better behavior out of your machine.
Fully agree on the defrag comment.

By: Apf

Apf — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:27:57 +0000

AVG uses the windows api to do its directory walking (unless something has changed with version 9) and that’s actually quite efficient. Even on a laptop disk spinning at 5,400rpm the scan should not be taking that long. I’d only expect that long a scan to be happening on a server with millions of files to scan. Last time I checked the average number of files (including cookies and temp files) floated around the 500k-600k entities, Even with a slow disk and low spec processor AVG should be able to scan any home machine in a lot less time than that. I did a scan earlier with one of my machine and was able to get it to push through about 1.2 million files in three hours.

One of the things that can really slow down some scanners though is the use of nested zip files. Especially if they are password protected. ZCDs have always been a pain to scan because the zip standard is sloppy and contradictory. Certain archive file formats can also be a problem. Microsoft CAB files come in several flavours and some of those can take a very long time to scan.

If the file numbers are not that large and it is taking that time to scan then there may be more underlying problems with the actual file structure within windows or with the disk itself. So I would recommend checking the disk if you can to make sure there are no bad sectors and that it isn’t fragmented to hell and back.

Another thing that can slow things down badly is operating systems decay overtime as we use them. We used to recommend re-installing the O/S and apps every six months for certain users as uninstallers are just very bad at that task. They always leave file fragments behind not to mention the mess they make of the registry.

It would be interesting to see how the scan times differ between AVG and Norton for the same machine. It’s always possible that AVG is not handling a file type or one file very well on the machine and is getting into a loop. If the amount of free disk is low, I know that some scanners will struggle (possibly they all will but I’ve not tested every single one on the market.)