Full scan in safe mode vs. full scan in normal

When I do a full scan on my Windows 7 machine when it is in normal mode, it scans something like 225,000 items. When I do a full scan when it is in safe mode, it scans about 314,000 items. Why is there this discrepancy? It looks like doing a full scan in normal operating mode is not really a full scan...Is there something I need to change or a problem I'm not aware of? The items to be scanned decreased considerably - maybe by about half - after I had the hard drive wiped clean and the essentials reinstalled about three months ago.

Thanks for your input.