Kudos0

Norton AntiVirus 10.0 Mac scan taking a long time

Posted: 01-Dec-2008 | 11:46PM · 3 Replies ·

Hello all,

I purchased nav 10 awhile ago but unistalled it after it never found a virus. Today i read an article that said apple finally recomends using an av program so i reinstalled Norton. I'm running a mac pro v1 2.66 ghz 4cpu 4 gb ram. i installed norton succesfully and downloaded the liveupdate update to v4 so everything is up to spec. i started a scan on my main hd aprox 5 hours ago and it is not even half way done. the scan info indicates that it is scanning (austin powers voice) 1 million files. now before everyone gets excited i regulary clear my firefox cache and i'm running on a leopard install that is only 3 weeks old. when i watch the scan progression it says it is decompressing some files to scan them. i don't mind scanning all my files this time since this is the first scan. How can i make future scans faster without comprimising my securtiy ? how can i possibly have (wait for it)  1 million files ? the hard drive is 300 gb total with 205 gb used. i have movies and music but not that much stuff. i do have my old os x tiger system on the drive as i selected the archive and install option when i installed leopard. in addition to my main hd there is also a 700 gb raid array that has 400 gb of mostly video. i don't really want to scan it if it's going to take foreverrrrr. any and all help would be appreciated.

Replies

Kudos1 Stats

Re: Norton AntiVirus 10.0 Mac scan taking a long time

Posted: 15-Dec-2008 | 7:15PM · Permalink

It's scan isn't skin deep; it delves several layers into files; thoroughly examining each file and its subfiles.
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Kudos0

Re: Norton AntiVirus 10.0 Mac scan taking a long time

Posted: 16-Dec-2008 | 12:09PM · Permalink

On top of that, some of the files are compressed and need to be decompressed to be analyzed…

Regardless, even though an initial scan can take a very long time, subsequent scans are usually a lot faster. I suspect that the engine checksums the files so that it doesn't need to re-analyze them if they haven't been modified between scans.

Kudos0

Re: Norton AntiVirus 10.0 Mac scan taking a long time

Posted: 21-Dec-2008 | 10:36AM · Permalink

Hi-

Mike, Mac product manager here. 

Yes...a lot of files. A lot of files, big hard drive...and we gotta scan it all. One way to shorten your scan is to turn of "scan compressed files" in the preferences. This will speed things up a bit.  But, honestly--ANY virus program on the Mac is going to have this problem, and we are all limited by the speed of your Mac's hard drive. Personally? I would scan the Mac before going to bed, and do it once a week or so--if that. You could probably get away with once a month and just keep Auto-Protect turned on.

 hope this helps, thanks for posting!

mike

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