I was just defragging the hard drive with defraggler, and notice a number of virscan1 through virscan9.dat files on the hard drive. A lot of these files have a date way before I installed NIS2009 in Sept, and I'd like to know far back I can delete those files, as I can recover maybe 200 megs of HD
Can I delete all the files prior to 1-1-09? If that's OK, I can recover maybe 205Megs.
Any advice is appreciated.
Regards, Bob
I hate to reply to my own posts, but I didn't see an edit post option. I noticed I needed to convert that 205 megs to 250 megs.
You would not want to delete individual files, but you might be able to delete entire folders if they are truly not in use. If you post the paths of these folders, it would help identify them.
ChristopherA wrote:You would not want to delete individual files, but you might be able to delete entire folders if they are truly not in use. If you post the paths of these folders, it would help identify them.
Thanks for the reply. Below is a listing of all the folders.
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\SymcData\virusdefs-2.5-e\BinHub
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\SymcData\virusdefs-2.5-e\20090104.003
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Symantec Shared\SymcData\virusdefs-2.5-e\20090101.005
C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Smith\Application Data\Symantec\Layouts\Norton 360\2.0\English\0E743DD31FF89B86DBEBF1C48C5BAFF874A5B132\20080103\N360\Setup\Norton\app\IDSDefs
C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Smith\Application Data\Symantec\Layouts\Norton 360\2.0\English\0E743DD31FF89B86DBEBF1C48C5BAFF874A5B132\20080103\Support\AV\VirusDef
C:\Documents and Settings\Robert Smith\Application Data\Symantec\Layouts\Norton 360\2.0\English\0E743DD31FF89B86DBEBF1C48C5BAFF874A5B132\20080103\Support\AV\VirusD64
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\WebProtectionDefs\BinHub
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\WebProtectionDefs\20090104.001
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\VirusDefs\20090104.020
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\IPSDefs\BinHub
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\IPSDefs\20081220.001
Now, I realize I can probably delete the folders listing Norton 360, but are there any others?
TIA,
Bob
If I’m not mistaking these files are really necassary. These are full of definitions. this is the part which is protecting you
250 megs isn’t anything to be concerned about unless you have a 5 gig hard rive. Most pc’s have atleast a 100 GIG drive. If you want to save some space then run Windows disk cleaner and delete your old system Restore points.
malwareman wrote:
250 megs isn't anything to be concerned about unless you have a 5 gig hard rive. Most pc's have atleast a 100 GIG drive. If you want to save some space then run Windows disk cleaner and delete your old system Restore points.
Thanks for the follow up folks, but the above comment is purely an assumption of one's computer without further facts. I'm using an older Toshiba laptop with 20 gigs HD. I have 5 gigs left, and would like to clean out some obsolete def files. I don't like having files I don't need, taking up space on my system.
I do know my way around a computer and the tools to clean out the obsolete files & programs tyvm. I go back to the old CPM days, DOS, & Windows 1.
My inquiry is ... are all those files necessary, spreadout in so many folders on the HD? I can't believe I need multiple 20Meg - 30Meg definition files.
In the past 4 months, I have installed and removed Norton 360 2.0, NIS 2008, NSW 2008 & 2009, have NIS 2009 installed and use Norton Tech Tool to check the status of the HD, registry, etc. I suspect using ALL these different programs have left reminents of themselves after removing them via regular uninstalls and in using Nortons Removal Tool.
If I were to remove all the large files, would it affect NIS 2009 till I used Liveupdate to download and install all the definition files spefically for NIS 2009?
I'd prefer to hear an answer from someone in Symantec's programming dept.
Just wanted to pass on my solution to the problem I listed. I had some correspondence with Riccardo @ Symantec, regarding NTT, and he had thought it would be no problem to delete at least the folder containing the NTT def files.
I did another search on my HD for all virscan*.dat files, which brought up 65 files with a total of 256 Megs of data. I selected them all, and then hit the delete file. All but 10 or so files were deleted, with the rest receiving a notice I could not delete the file(s) as they were in use.
I then slapped my head ... said Duhhhh .... of course those files that were being used by NIS 2009 couldn't be deleted as they were being used. Long story short, I was able to delete 210 megs off the hard drive.
The folders starting with:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\
are your Norton 2009 definitions files and definitely should not be tampered with.
The virusdefs-2.5-e and Norton 360 folders belong to other products. If you do not have any Symantec product on your machine other than NIS2009, you do not need these folders.
ChristopherA wrote:The folders starting with:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Norton\{0C55C096-0F1D-4F28-AAA2-85EF591126E7}\Norton\Definitions\
are your Norton 2009 definitions files and definitely should not be tampered with.
The virusdefs-2.5-e and Norton 360 folders belong to other products. If you do not have any Symantec product on your machine other than NIS2009, you do not need these folders.
Well, as mentioned, I did try to delete ALL of the files, and about 10 would not delete ... all those dat files that were in use by NIS 2009 ... Because I had NIS 2009 running, the system wouldn't let me delete those, and in the long run ... it worked out nicely.
When you were searching for the various virscan.dat files, you should have noticed that they are each a member of a /VirusDefs/yyyymmdd.rrr folder. These folders are the virus definition files for the given dates. In addition to the virscanN.dat N=1-9 the folders contain multiple other update files for the date in question.
I suggest that you should also investigate which of those files have also been superceded (outdated) and can be deleted. Perhaps many of the folders can be completely deleted (after backup off line, just in case :-) )
-- 250MB. That's not bad at all. Nothing to sneeze at! --
--
Rostyk <urjlew@bellsouth.net>
Thanks for the reply. When I did the original search, I didn't look over the folders, I just did a search on the dat files. Good info provided though.
After deleting those files not associated with NIS 2009, I was able to recover 210 Megs ....)