How long should a Bitdefender deep scan take?

Kernel_Sanders

I've installed the free edition, primarily to try and identify and remove adware. But the deep sweep auto-scan has been running nearly 10 hours now (43 files quarantined). Should I pause the scan then put the PC on standby for the night?

GunJack

no, especially if it's finding stuff, let it run...

Kernel_Sanders

I did what I suggested. Have just unpaused it and Autoscan now says 'running' again but annoyingly, there is no progress bar.

RumRat

You only get a progress bar with the paid for version.
The scans run in the background and don't really affect any performance of the PC.
That said 10 hours+ does seem a bit excessive, I know it depends on your system, but, when I had the free version, I can't remember it taking more than an hour on the rare occassions I monitored it.
The paid for version does a system scan very quickly on my machine.
As you are doing though, best to just let it run, especially as it is finding stuff and carry on using your machine in the meantime.

Knarf44

Another possibility is that the scan encountered a bad sector or sectors on your hard drive usually a sign of a failing hard disk.

If you know the brand of you hard disk you could run the maker's diagnostic tool.

The Western Digital one can be downloaded from here

The Seagate one from here

For Samsung here Either the HUTIL or SUTIL program depending on the age/model number of your hard drive.

Alternatively, you can simply run a CHKDSK

instructions for Windows 7 and 8.1 here

Obviously, if the hard disk scan comes back clean then there was another reason why the scan took so long which may have had something to do with it possibly uploading files to its cloud scanner for verification. We need you feedback to advise further.

Kernel_Sanders

When I got back in this evening I found the scan had only finished at 5.30 pm, although there were still only 43 quarantined files. My PC is still just as slow, everything takes an age to load, do anything or shut down (except Paint - it always pops up promptly!). This is the reason why the scan took nearly 20 hours. It's a Sony VAIO, over 10 years old but has an Intel Pentium 4 and is running XP on 1.5GB of RAM. Is the CHKDSK the thing that comes up in light blue and white on start-up? That happens every few weeks, and I have always performed it. I had Avast free version before I tried Bitdefender. Other random strange things happen, e.g. in the screenshot I thanked Rumrat's post before Knarf's and although both 'thanks' buttons disappeared, no thanks were notified on the former. It was rectified when I refreshed the page, though. I know I have a lot of adware on this machine, especially doubleclick, which I can't seem to be rid of.

Knarf44

Does the chkdsk on start up confirm all is ok or does it report errors? From your own description it sounds like the laptop is heavily infected with malware so I think you have a choice to make: do you want to keep scanning it with tools such as Malwarebytes, ADW Cleaner, Junkware Remover and Hitman Pro in the hope that between all of them they remove enough to get the laptop functioning reasonably quickly again OR do a complete reinstall of XP which unless you have access to a slipstreamed version that includes SP3 and any post SP3 security updates could be a nightmare to do OR scrap XP all together and put a Linux distro on it instead eg Linux Feather or Linux Ubuntu both are quite user friendly these days.

If you decide to go down the Malware scan route then all the links to the programs mentioned above can be found in the downloads section of https://www.bleepingcomputer.com

Kernel_Sanders

Knarf44 wrote: »

If you decide to go down the Malware scan route then all the links to the programs mentioned above can be found in the downloads section of www.bleepingcomputer.com

I've just installed a few of those, but ideally I'd like to dual boot with a small Linux distro for speed, but it would need to connect easily to 3 mobile broadband and Ubuntu is the only one I know that does that. I have all the discs that came with it (it's a PC) and also have copies of SPs 2 & 3 but as you point out, I can't source the updates from then until the end of support.
CHKDSK reports all is OK.

Knarf44

Thought had found an answer - earlier post deleted.

Checking back through some forums it seems that XP's post SP3 updates may still be available via Windows Update.