Norton Internet Security / Norton AntiVirus

[SGFC Regular Contributor]

How come sometimes the Full System Scan will scan only 100,000 files and sometimes it scans 500,000? Just curious as to the reason behind this.

[SendOfJive Norton Fighter]

Hi SGFC,

Norton will skip any unchanged files that were found to be clean in an earlier scan.  The skipped files will only be rescanned if they have been modified or if Norton has received a new set of virus definitions since the prior scan.  So, if your scans are within a few hours of each other, the second scan can certainly be much shorter than the first.  If you look at "More Details" for one of your scans in Norton History, you can expand the Total Items Scanned listing to show how many files were skipped or trusted, and were therefore not included in the scan's file count.

[SGFC Regular Contributor]

Most of the time the time between scans exceeds 6 hours. On August the 7th at 4:00pm it scanned 400,000 files On August the 8th at 8:03pm it scanned under 200,000 files. So there was an 16 hour period in between scans.

[Holly]

I used to have that problem. It usually occurred if I used my computer during the full system scan. However, ever since I got the new version (19.8.0.14), that hasn't happened. I kept the full scan configuration that was the default and I've noticed  a check mark is next to Only at Idle Time. This could be the reason as if I interrupt the scan by using my computer to go on the internet the full scan stops, but then continues the scan when the computer is idle. Go to scan history (for your last Full System Scan) and click on the underlined Full System Scan ( printed in the color blue) and see if  Only at Idle time is checked. Also after my full system scan, has started ( I usually wait a little while.) if I click on do a  Full System Scan, after a minute or two I will see the scan will start where it left off, if I've been using the computer ( using the internet). 

Holly

[yank Trojan Terminator · Accepted solution]

Hi SGFC,

I have mine set to run every 7 days (only during Idle).  Mine does exactly what Holly said - start, stop when it comes out of idle and then restarts at the point where it left off after it goes back into idle. 

This will cause the number of files to vary as it will only report the files in the final run of the scan.  If I scanned 200,000 files the first scan, came out of idle and then finished the scan the next idle with 150,000 files - it would only show 150,000 files as scanned and the time it took to complete that section of the scan.  My 7 day count starts when the final scan is run - which may be a day or two after the 7 day point passed.

[SGFC Regular Contributor]

Most of my NIS settings are default. I only change a few settings and add a password to NIS settings. I Full System Scan my PC everyday. I guess we'll just chalk this up as normal behavior. Oh and it did say it skipped some files like sendofjive said.