(Anti) Virus Scan Taking Too Long

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1

I decided aboiut a week ago to do a full scan on my computer; it's an iMac running OS 10.8.4 and Norton Antivirus v 11.1.2. The dialog box came up with the progress bar indicating that there were apporoximately 5, 700, 000 items to scan so I expected it to take a while so just let it run overnight. The next day I checked the progress and was only about a 1/3 complete.....the progress bar came to it's visual conclusion in about 4 days, but the scan has continued and has NOT completed. We are now up to around 12, 500, 000 items and it's still running a week later. This seems a bit excessive to me......does anyone have a suggestion as to what's up?

 

Thanks,

2

I decided aboiut a week ago to do a full scan on my computer; it's an iMac running OS 10.8.4 and Norton Antivirus v 11.1.2. The dialog box came up with the progress bar indicating that there were apporoximately 5, 700, 000 items to scan so I expected it to take a while so just let it run overnight. The next day I checked the progress and was only about a 1/3 complete.....the progress bar came to it's visual conclusion in about 4 days, but the scan has continued and has NOT completed. We are now up to around 12, 500, 000 items and it's still running a week later. This seems a bit excessive to me......does anyone have a suggestion as to what's up?

 

Thanks,

3

It sounds like you need a deinstall and reinstall of Norton Antivirus for Mac.  Here is what you should do:

 

1 - Go to the Symantec folder in your Applications folder and select uinstall.

(You're not done, yet.)

2 - Open your webbrowser and go to www.norton.com/rmac

3 - click and download the remove symantec files file.

4 - Double click on the file, which will be in you downloads folder.

5 - It will take you in to Terminal, where you will be given two choices.

6 - Choose to remove all symantec files.  This remove visible and invisible files and give you a clean slate for the reinstall.

7 - Sign on to your account or go to www.norton.com/navm12  (You will need your product key.)

8 - Download the install file.

9 - Double click on it in your downloads folder.

10 - Reinstall, enter your product key, and run another scan.

11 - A normal scan should only take around 40 minutes.

4

I just noticed you have Norton Antivirus for Mac version 11.  Ignore my information in step 7 about going to www.norton.com/navm12 and just sign on to your account and redownload Norton Antivirus for Mac version 11.

5

Thanks for your assistance; it seemed like an inordinate amount of time.

 

I began the process you outlined above; step one was pretty straight forward, but step two took me to this page (http://us.norton.com/individuals-mac/promo) where I could not find any options to download the "remove Symantec Files file" I did a quick search on the site and found a download that was called Norton Zone, but it didn't sound like what I was after. Any followup suggesstions?

 

Thanks,

6

It should download the zip file for uninstallation. It seems to be working fine.

7

Yes, MY MISTAKE......I was entering www.norton.com/mac instead of "rmac". I did get the page with the downloadable Zip file, but I can't open / run it as I get this message: Screen Shot 2013-07-25 at 7.07.56 AM.png

 

I'm sure that there must be a way around this....security preferences?? Any suggestions on this?

 

Thanks,

8

I did, for now, change the security preferences allowing me to run this file, BUT when it opened in Terminal and asked for the administrators passwords (I've never set one up), I used my normal password for the computer, but I was unable to see any response to my entry as I typed....the cursor was present, but there was no response as I typed characters...I'm not a "frequent user" of Terminal so am not familiar with how it works...There's probably something stupid (common for me) that I'm omitting, but I don't know what it is.

 

Any further help here would be appreciated.

 

Thanks,

9

The terminal won't show any response to the password typed. Just type it in and hit Enter. There after it will start removing Symantec files.

10

Thanks all for your help. I FINALLY managed to get the deletions done and installed a new version of NAV and ran a new scan. It completed in about 4 hours.  It ran through to completion and I was able to delete some suspicious files. So, I'm hoping, everything's back to normal for now. Thanks again.

11

On a side note, when you reinstalled was it NAV 12.5?   NAV 11 is not compatible with OS X 10.8.

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