Full system scan taking a LONG time

I installed NIS 2010 after the support for MS Live One Care was dropped (I know)

I am running it on Win XP, SP3

I have about 225 gig of used space on this machine, with very few movie or music files.

I have a networked hard drive with 900 gig of music files.

I had NIS 2010 configured to run idle scans but these would freeze my system requiring a reboot.

I turned off idle scans and scheduled a full scan to run weekly at 1:00 AM on Saturday.

It is now 6:22 and the scan is still running.

The screen shows that it has scanned 278,382 items

It has been at this number for at least 45 minutes,.

The file name at the top is C:\WINDOWS\Installer\$PatchCache$ (is this the file currently being scanned?)

 

Can someone advise me on what to do, i.e., stop this scan, let it run, reconfigure NIS 2010, etc.?

 

 

Hi haydesc,

 

225 gig will take a long time to scan, but in this case it sounds as if the scan is hanging (200,000 files should take less than an hour).  Try scanning in safe mode.  Do you have any other security software installed that might block the Norton scan?  Do you suspect you might have a malware infection?  Either of these things can cause a scan to freeze.

I installed NIS 2010 after the support for MS Live One Care was dropped (I know)

I am running it on Win XP, SP3

I have about 225 gig of used space on this machine, with very few movie or music files.

I have a networked hard drive with 900 gig of music files.

I had NIS 2010 configured to run idle scans but these would freeze my system requiring a reboot.

I turned off idle scans and scheduled a full scan to run weekly at 1:00 AM on Saturday.

It is now 6:22 and the scan is still running.

The screen shows that it has scanned 278,382 items

It has been at this number for at least 45 minutes,.

The file name at the top is C:\WINDOWS\Installer\$PatchCache$ (is this the file currently being scanned?)

 

Can someone advise me on what to do, i.e., stop this scan, let it run, reconfigure NIS 2010, etc.?

 

 

Thanks for the reply.

 

I have Webroot Spy Sweeper installed and running.  I disabled the email attachment shield in Spy Sweeper as recommended somewhere to supposedly eliminate a conflict. 

 

I have run the free version of Malwarebytes and it has not come up with anything.

 

Yesterday NIS 2010 removed an adware trojan.

 

 

Webroot Spy Sweeper could be the culprit.  If running in real time, it could be interpreting the Norton scan's accessing of certain files as appearing to be malicious.  Spy Sweeper and Norton sometimes can get along, but there are many reports of conflicts as well.

I am currently running a full scan in safe mode.

 

Should I just remove Spy Sweeper?

 

Also, does this full scan that I am running include scanning my network drive?

 

Last question - Is there a definitive reference that will walk me through the proper configuration of NIS 2010?

 

Hi haydesc,

 

Were you able to complete the scan in safe mode? 

 

You may want to remove Spy Sweeper.  There are some who insist that they can run this program along with Norton, but then again, not all conflicts are necessarily readily apparent.  In general it is never a good idea to have two real-time security applications in use simultaneously.  System performance can be adversely impacted and your protection can actually be lessened, as the two programs can seriously interfere with each other's proper functioning and blocking of malicious things that try to run on your PC.

 

Someone else, other than I, should address your question about scanning the network drive.

 

The most comprehensive information about configuring Norton settings is the Norton Help Center (Help & Support > Help, on the main Norton window).  If you cannot locate an answer you are seeking there, feel free to post your question here on the forums.

Moved to its own thread.