This is Ridiculous!!

[ChrissyR]

I just ran an anti-spyware scan using SAS and it took 8 hours and 50 Minutes to complete (On a "Quick Scan")! It scanned a total of 1.3 MILLION FILES! I hear that the average computer take around 2 hours to complete and rarely scans more than 300000 files. Why do I have so many files on my computer?? I am currently using Windows Vista and the computer is less than a year old. I can't stand this as I want to do a scan every week but this is not possible as I cannot wait for nearly 9 hours every time. I always remove programs and other things which I no longer require from my computer. Please can someone help me?

[computeruler]

download ccleaner delete every program you dont need music/pictures you dont like documents you dont need

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Woah, 1.3 million files??

With CCleaner, run the system sweeps to delete up all your temporary files. This should reduce the number by a few hundred...

CCleaner can be found here:
http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,57879.0.html

[ChrissyR]

Forgot to mention that I have CCleaner and I use it to delete all temporary files at least every week.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Can you use Add and Remove Programs in Control Panel (i'm using XP so your Vista may be different) and look through the list of programs and see what you don't need and uninstall it.
Look through all your files in your computer and delete anything that you don't need any more.

A Disk Defragmentation wouldn't hurt either. (do it more than once if you haven't done it in a long time)

[ChrissyR]

I do not have any programs on the computer which I do not need and there is only 46 programs on the list. I did a Disk Defrag last week. My Computer does not have anything on it which is not required and I rarely put anything new onto it. Does Windows Vista have alot of files which are required to keep the system running? I know for a fact that I have not put 1.3 Million files onto my computer.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

That depends... For example, if you have many archives, there may be hundreds of fies in one archive (zipped folder)
Applications may have more than one 'files' inside (like installers)

If you go to Command Prompt and type dir C:\ /s and let it run until it stops.
at the bottom, it should say how many files there are in total.

This is mine:


From what I can remember, the computer scanned over 200,000 files. (actually I think it was more like 300,000...)

[ChrissyR]

Ok I did that this is what it looks like (don't know how to post pics):

Total Files Listed:
99831 File(s) 23,015,824,801 bytes
49772 Dir(s) 243,690,201,088 bytes free

I find it very weird that SAS is scanning 1.3 million files and the computer says that I only have 99831 files  what's going on? lol

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Hmmm....Good to know you don't have 1.3 million files

Is it possible the number of files was added to previous scans?

EDIT:

I just ran an anti-spyware scan using SAS and it took 8 hours and 50 Minutes to complete

Never mind. 9 hours...

[ChrissyR]

Thanks for the help  is there any way to stop SAS from scanning certain "things" which are taking all the time to scan? Do you know what it is scanning to make the scan take so long to complete?

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

I know Kaspersky has a window that shows you what's being scanned and you can choose to skip it if it is scanning one file for more than 10 seconds.

I'm not familiar with SAS you I can't help there, Sorry.

[ChrissyR]

Ok thanks very much for the help anyway 

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

Don't let this keep you from running antivirus scans 

[Dias de verano]

AVG found about 1.2 million files on my computer. The scan took about 1 hour 10 minutes. I do not think that figure is abnormal. When you think of all the cookies and other temporary internet files, windows hotfixes, files inside archives, etc you can quite easily go over a million on XP.

[ChrissyR]

Ok fair point, however I already said that:

1. I use Vista not XP
2. I delete all of my temporary internet files, cookies etc on a regular basis
3. I feel that 9 hours to complete a Spyware scan is abnormal
4. I just did a virus scan on AVG and it scanned 1093847 and took around 40 minutes to complete.

My point is - why is it taking so long to scan with SAS?