My Norton Internet Security 2011 cannot complete a full system scan because it cannot scan my external (usb 2.0 and usb 3.0) hard drives; when it tries to scan one of those drives, the scan starts very fast but slows down gradually, and after some minutes it hangs and cannot complete the scan. When NIS 2011 hangs, there's no disk or cpu activity at all, but he NIS interface still shows the progress bar moving (but not files are scanned). And, the same thing happens with 3 different usb drives that work just fine (and are scanned fine by NIS 2011) in other computers that I have. (Note: I have 2 internal SATA drives installed on the troubled computer with the same data as the usb drives and NIS scan them very well).
The external usb drives scan very well on windows safe mode though.
I tried many things to fix the problem: downloaded and installed the latest drives, downloaded and installed the latest windows updates, uninstalled NIS + run the norton removal tool 3 times + installed latest NIS version, disabled the compressed file scan and many more things, but nothing seems to work (except running the scan on safe mode).
My OS is a Windows 7 professional 64 bits with 16 Gb Ram.
The fact that a scan in safe mode works implies that something that only runs in normal mode is interferring with the Norton scan. Do you have other security software installed on this machine?
Partial success! After spending unending hours on this problem, on my own and with tech support, I found a a way in which NIS 2011 scans all drives, external or not: What I did was to select the "number of threads for manual scan" to 4 (instead of auto). According with the norton 2011 help center, here's what is said about the "auto" selection of number of threads:
"When you select the Auto option, Norton Internet Security uses the threads based on the number of physical processor cores that you have. Norton Internet Security uses twice the number of physical processor cores that you have. For example, if you have a dual-core processor and you select the Auto option, Norton Internet Security uses four threads to scan. "
My computer has a core i7 2600k, which has 4 physycal cores and plus 4 logical cores due to hyperthreading (theoretically 8 cores). Picking anything more than 4 threads stalls the scan on external drives. I tried it several times, and with 4 threads it works great, and 8 or more threads it hangs.
I was told that there's no way to select the number of threads for scheduled scans, thus I still don't have it working. If any of you have a suggestion I would appreciate. Also, if you would like to opinate, why this is happening, I would appreciate that too (again, nis scans all drives well in auto thread mode when in windows safe mode).
Thanks Ken -- it really helps to see how Norton Staff do benefit from what goes on here -- it's not just a PR exercise, or a cheap way of keeping the peasants quiet as someone recently suggested! <g>
Somehow I don't think this could keep the peasants quiet/calm/mollified/etc
If anything I'd expect the revolution to start here. Since there's no need for that we have a well behaved community of folks who really do help each other. For me it's a fun place to be and learn
I say let them eat cake! It's probably just a lolcat stuck in a processor thread.
Say, what's with all the torches and pitchforks?
;)
(back to testing)
Someone made a big, long fuss recently about how lousy Norton support was and they only used the Forums as a cheap way of appearing to supply support .......
