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Super Anti Spyware.


Northerner

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Hope I am posting in the right sub forum!

I have a look at this forum regularly altho' most of the stuff is over my head.

Can anyone give a possible reason why the last time I did a full scan with Super Anti Spyware,on my Dell PC with XP, it took over 3 hours to complete. The time needed used to be around 55 minutes but that has been steadily increasing over the past 2 to 3 weeks.

Also (I don't know if I am using the correct terminology) is there any "evidence" that Super Anti Spyware is more likely to produce false positives than,for example, Malwarebytes.

I downloaded both based on information from this forum as I get the impression there a number of posters here who know a great deal about computers.

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Do you use ccleaner? Just wondering if you perhaps have a lot of temp files etc for the scanner to get through.

 

3 hours does sound a little bit of a long time. Have you used it for a while now? Is it new behaviour? What operating system are you using?

 

If you feel that there is even a remote possibility of nasties, post the two scans requested here into the Spyware Hell part of the forum and our Spyware Moderator can then make sure there is nothing hiding.

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120

 

In my opinion both Super and MBAM have a place in 'on demand scanners' that can be kept as part of a users arsenal.

 

Support contact

https://support.ccleaner.com/s/contact-form?language=en_US&form=general

or

support@ccleaner.com

 

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Scanning time can also depend upon what real-time antivirus you have installed. For instance with Microsoft Security Essentials real-time protection running expect other anti-malware to take significantly longer to complete its scan.

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Sometime I switch my Comodo protection to fully off and Internet Blocked because I know my machine is clean and malware protection is not needed with the Internet blocked.

 

In this condition CCleaner can clean twice as quickly, e.g. 10 Seconds instead of 20.

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Wouldn't switching your Comodo protection fully off and making your internet blocked take about...10 seconds?

 

No, it is a configuration switch that happens simultaneously,

otherwise I would have taken care to isolate the internet whilst altering the A.V. and the Defense+ behaviour monitoring.

 

I only did this once just to see what happened,

and as suspected it showed that with A.V. set to scan on Access before the file can do damage will also cause a scan when CCleaner accesses to delete.

 

I do not bother with saving a few seconds when CCleaner is working,

But when I am using Teracopy to copy thousands of files from one drive to another it sure saves time if I can assume they are virus free and disable scanning.

 

I also go to this mode when doing advanced things with a partition manager,

ever since I know not what had a conflict and instead of adding a new partition I lost all those I already had.

Nice to have Boot CD's for both my Partition Manager and Macrium.

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Do you use ccleaner? Just wondering if you perhaps have a lot of temp files etc for the scanner to get through.

 

3 hours does sound a little bit of a long time. Have you used it for a while now? Is it new behaviour? What operating system are you using?

 

If you feel that there is even a remote possibility of nasties, post the two scans requested here into the Spyware Hell part of the forum and our Spyware Moderator can then make sure there is nothing hiding.

 

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120

 

In my opinion both Super and MBAM have a place in 'on demand scanners' that can be kept as part of a users arsenal.

I use CCleaner all the time so there are never any temporary internet files for the scanner to get through.

I use SAS regularly and my operating system is Windows XP.

I am sure SAS was updated fairly recently. The "quick scan" now takes slightly longer, than before, but scans the same number of file items on my PC. The number given for file items scanned by the "full scan" has increased steadily over the past couple of weeks, and now the figure is around 3 times what it was in the recent past. This past figure stayed pretty constant since I downloaded SAS ages ago.

Maybe that is the reason for the time increase but 3 hours plus would seem to be an inordinate amount of time!

I am going to leave the issue for a few days and may get back to you.

Lastly, Malwarebytes and Spybot do not take any longer to scan and do not show any "nasties".

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Scanning time can also depend upon what real-time antivirus you have installed. For instance with Microsoft Security Essentials real-time protection running expect other anti-malware to take significantly longer to complete its scan.

I have McAfee Internet Security.

I know it is not particularly popular,on this forum,but it came free with my Dell PC and I kept it on. I intend to change to MSE or Avast soon.

However McAfee was on my PC long before SAS began to take a much greater time to perform a scan so I can't see how it could have, in any way, caused the increase in SAS scan time.

Thanks for the replies!

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It's quite possible that McAfee might be the cause of your increasingly longer scans. I have seen odd problems caused by McAfee (such as slow perfomrance due to expired our out of date anti-virus program itself).

 

Also, after scanning dozens of computers with Super Anti-Spyware I found the following affects it's speed too:

 

1. If real-time protection is running in the background while you're doing a scan with SuperAntispyware).

2. How much stuff you have on your machine. More stuff = slower times.

3. The state of the hard drive.

 

I've seen things like Norton 360 and co. with it's "Idle Time Scans" kick in while it's going making the scan take longer than it needs to be. I do know that McAfee can start scanning (but it generally tells you that before it does).

 

My suggestion, probably the easiest thing to do is do a scan in Safe Mode (to get here press F8 key before the Windows Logo comes up). At least this way you can verify if there is a process/processes running on the computer in normal boot that might be causing the problem. I do know that McAfee does run in Safe mode, but not sure to what extent it runs.

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I downloaded both based on information from this forum as I get the impression there a number of posters here who know a great deal about computers.

Here are things to reguard in respect to speeding up your pc. They may vary a bit depending on if you are using XP/Vista/7. Currently, I am XP at the moment:

 

- Run CCleaner to clear your trash. No need to scan through it. Exit all web browsers first.

- Still in CCleaner, navigate to startup panel & disable all entries that you know are safe to not load at boot. Such as MSN/Yahoo/etc. DO NOT disable your antivirus.

- Under restore point control (if your computer is working correctly & you have a backup), disable all but the last restore point

- Under Uninstall tab, uninstall toolbars (Such as Ask toolbar, etc.) as well as any application you no longer need or use any more.

- Under tools/drive wiper, select free space only & allow it to wipe your MFT. When it starts to wipe free space, cancel out. This can improve performance a lot.

 

- Run Defraggler to defrag the drive & consolidate free space.

- Right-click/properties on my computer, & under advanced/settings, experiment with settings for performance VS appearance. In XP, leave only the bottom 6 checked, then uncheck the one that says "Use a background image for each folder type".

- Under task manager, you can disable floppy drives or any other drive you don't use (speed up computer boot/browsing files).

- Open My Computer & under tools/folder options/view, turn off "automatically search for network folders and printers". This speeds up boot.

- Use Nirsoft Startup Run to disable any BHO resident on your system. These load on startup & cause performance problems.

 

- If you are running XP, go to start/run/tasks & enter. Disable all tasks that you don't need running (usually none). These boot with windows & slow things down

- CTRL + ALT + DEL to bring up task manager. Check your commit charge vs your total RAM. If it is close, you really need to add more RAM to gain back your speed.

- Check what antivirus you are running. Some antivirus programs are resource hogs. AVG free generally does good.

- Use Firefox instead of internet explorer to surf the web. Internet explorer has a known Active-X drive by malware dump exploit that cripples computers completely if you visit certain maliciously crafted exploit based pages. You are much safer with Firfox/Chrome/Opera since these do not have this exploit. Opera is fastest but some websites do not work right. Chrome is next fastest, but when using it, bookmarks & other things just aren't like they are in Firefox. I prefer Firefox & think it is the best in terms of overall speed/safety/usability.

- Check your IE version on the PC. Update it to the latest version possible. The update can increase performance/fix connectivity issues with certain wifi connections. I assume that this is due to the newer versions supporting HTML5 or something that the older one can't. Whether you use it or not, it still helps to update it.

 

- Check your free space. If you have a ton of files you downloaded (pictures/videos/games/etc.), then windows does decrease in speed as you download more & more. I know that in XP, if you have a directory with over 5,000 files, it will take forever to view (if at all). You can use Locate32 to move files from a folder like this & trim it back down to around 3,500 or so, till it gets back to a useable state. NEVER make the mistake of zipping more than 4GB files into a zip folder. It will corrupt the contents (zip folder size limit). Use something like RAR format for this, which can take hundreds of GB with no problem. Also, be ware that if you have tons of compressed or zipped folders, it will slow directory browsing quite a bit. If you got a lot of files, use an external drive. Send your pictures/video/music to the drive & free up the space your using. If you had to do this, it would be wise to CClean again after your completed, being sure that you run the drive wiper to clean free space so you can wipe the MFT of invalid entries that no longer exist (cancel when it begins to wipe the drive if you wish). Then defrag & your performance should go back up.

- You can turn off file indexing if you use a program like Locate32 so that your drive won't waste drive life indexing files needlessly (helps performance too).

- If you have multiple users on a machine, it will run slightly better overall if you delete any users you do not need via control panel/user account control. If you do this, be sure to back up any files/settings (such as firefox profiles)/favorites etc, that you may need from that profile before erasing it.

 

* If the number of file items being found has steadily increased over the last several weeks, I would be cautious. It is well known that computer that become infected with root kits will unload tons of cookies/files/downloads/malware to either your Local or Network service (normally hidden from view). Even running Combofix may not fully clean such infections. You may want to manually navigate to the directories after opening My Computer/tools/folder options/view & click Show Hidden Files & Folders, as well as unchecking Hide Operating System Files & apply the changes. Then go to your windows installation drive (usually C:) & navigate to the Documents and Settings folder. Check your Local & Network folders. Branch out the temp/temporary internet files folders & branch out fully the ones for content.ie5. If those are filled with files, you are likely infected with a rootkit. If you have a rootkit, it is nothing to see hundreds, or even thousands of files here. A few files such as Desktop.ini are normal. But you should never see cookies/downloaders/etc in these unused user folders.

 

After verifying whether these folders are blank, re-trace your prior steps to re-hide the system files/folders. If they contain lots of files, it will also help explain your system slow down, & will only get worse till your system crashes/bluescreens. It almost always is the work of a hidden rootkit/malware if you do find these areas full of files. If you delete them, they always come back until you have eradicated the scripts/exe/com/dll files associated with these kits. They are a pain to get rid of. Especially Alureon or TDL4 variants. If they are blank, you may not have this problem. If you DO see this, go ahead & back up your system (all files/folders/settings) that are important, IMMEDIATELY & think of doing a reformat & reinstall of Windows. Back up your drivers with Double Driver or Driver Magician Lite. This will make restoring drivers easier. It is generally a good idea to run 2 driver backups, because there is the occasion that one will miss a few sound/video/lan files on backup & the other will contain what is missing. Windows will always let you know if something is missing when you are restoring, so this is no problem. Most of the time they work fine, but there are occasions...

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