Slow scan - normal?

My Spybot scan is really very slow: it now takes about 4 hours or more just to complete a scan. Is that normal?

I upgraded Spybot to 1.5.2 many months ago and scans were much slower as compared to before.

Are the slow scans supposed to be normal? I can't just leave my computer on for 4 hours or so. I have lately aborted 2 scans due to time constraints.

Please help. Thanks!

that doesnt sound normal.....

Try scanning with all your security protection including antiviruis and other antispyware programs. Remove anything found. Restart the computer.

Have you defragmented your drive lately? Go to my computer, right click your C drive, go to properties. click tools-disk defragmenter. Click analyze when the program opens. If it says you need to defrag your hard drive, then do so. Click defrag. If not, then don't. Expect it to take awhile if it does need it. Disable any screen saver from running during this process. This not only speeds up your computer, but it lets windows know where everything is, so it can find it faster.

Also, try doing all the scans in safe mode, and remove anything found if you know how. If you don't know how to scan in safe mode, here you go:

How to boot into safe mode:

Reboot your computer into SafeMode by doing the following:

* Restart your computer
* After hearing your computer beep once during startup, but before the Windows icon appears, begin tapping F8.
* Instead of Windows loading as normal, a menu should appear.
* Select the first option, to run Windows in Safe Mode.


Hope that helps you

Hayashi Akie

In addition to the suggestions 129260 has made:-

You don't say what operating system you have, or anything about your PC. If it is a old slow machine with little memory this may be very relevant. The other thing is what antivirus software are you using. Some of the antivirus software can significantly slow down the Spybot scan.

You could also try a disk cleanup. If your system is XP goto Start/Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk cleanup. Make sure the boxes for Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, Offline Web pages, Recycle Bin and Temporary files are ticked and all other boxes unticked then click OK. From memory there is a similar function in Win98.

It is also perhaps worth clearing out history and cookies from your browser.

My OS is Windows XP. I've tried defragmentation and cleanup before, but it doesn't seem to increase the speed. My computer is not very old and I do not have other antivirus software installed.

Spybot was pretty fast until the upgrade. And I have seen the threads about HTT but I didn't understand them. It may have something to do with that but I am not sure.

My Spybot is still pretty slow after trying out the methods. Is there any other way?

Hayashi Akie

If as you say you have tried all the suggestions offered and it hasn't improved the situation, then on the information provided I'm not sure what else you can do.

Despite being asked you still have not given much in the way of specific details. Regardless of its age, if your computer has a slow processor, a small hard drive with the majority of its capacity used and limited memory shared with an onboard video, then it will be slow, though 4 hours is excessive. Now I suspect that this may not be your situation, but you need to provide the details.

Specifically, what processor (and processor speed) does your computer have, what size memory, what size hard drive and how much of the drive capacity is used and unused. Please confirm exactly what version of Spybot you have.

In your last post you say you do not have any other antivirus software installed. SpybotSD is NOT an antivirus program, and if you don't have antivirus protection your computer is at grave risk, perhaps already badly infected, and that could be why it is very slow.

It is critical you install antivirus software, I personally use Avast! Home Edition, but there are a number of other good products. You need to do a full antivirus scan and remove any problems that finds first. When that is clear, do a full scan with the latest version of SpybotSD. You didn't mention what if anything was found on your previous Spybot scans and that may also be relevant.

Sorry I can't offer a quick fix solution.

My computer is 180Ghz with 256MB of RAM. My hard drive has a total size of 38.2GB, free disk space is 5.86GB and used space is 32.4GB. (sorry I didn't provide this earlier. I'm a computer dummy and had to search around a bit for the info)

My spybot version is 1.5.2. I upgraded Spybot to a newer version through the updates and after the upgrade, scans became very slow.

I haven't tried an antivirus scan yet but will try it out now.

I hope this info helps. Thanks for helping!

Hayashi Akie said:

My computer is 180Ghz with 256MB of RAM. My hard drive has a total size of 38.2GB, free disk space is 5.86GB and used space is 32.4GB

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Hayashi Akie,
From the size of the hard drive I think your computer is very likely a laptop (Notebook) with a nominal 40GB hard drive, and the processor speed is probably 1.80GHz, not 180GHz. 256MB of ram is not ideal for XP and you would almost certainly see a noticable improvement if you could get this increased to at least 512MB.

You will need to maintain fairly good housekeeping to ensure that you don't run your hard drive too close to its full capacity, however as it is, your computer should not be taking anywhere near 4 hours to complete a Spybot scan.

From your latest post I gather you now have antivirus software, and it will be interesting to see what it finds. Please let us know how the scan goes, and also what antivirus program you used.

I do not run my hard drive to full capacity. Its 1.80 GHz, sorry for the typo there. With the antivirus programme Avast on your recommendation, it only found 2 problems which were fixed (there were no viruses but had a trojan horse).

I am not able to upgrade my computer at this time as I will be using it only for a year more or so therefore would not be practical.

Is there a way to solve the problem?

Thanks lots for your help!

Hayashi Akie,

Once SpybotSD and your antivirus software confirm your PC is free of malware, virus etc, then their realtime protection should look after normal day to day use, and it should only be necessary to carry out "on demand" full scans once a week, so the time these take is perhaps not so important.

I can only suggest that you minimise the amount of work needed in these scans by clearing your Internet browser caches, History and cookies before starting the scans and perhaps also first running Windows Disk Cleanup (Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup). I also suggest you remove any folders that may be presently in the Spybot "download directories" (the default is none).

You should also perhaps check the setting of your Windows "swap file" or virtual memory (Start/Control Panel/System/Advanced/Performance Settings/Advanced/Virtual Memory/Change). The normal setting if you only have a single partition would be Drive C: and "System managed size". Check that the currently allocated size is at least as much as the recommended size.

The only other thing I can think of at the moment, is to perhaps do your weekly Spybot scan in Safe mode. (Press the F8 key during bootup). This will maximise the amount resources available for the scan.

I hope this is of some help.

you can also

go into spybot. click mode-advanced mode. CLick yes, go to settings. settings again. under scan priority, choose high. This way your computer will use all its resources to finish spybot's scan. The recommended is normal. See if it is on normal first, then try what i suggested. Hope that helps!!

129260 said:

...under scan priority, choose high. This way your computer will use all its resources...The recommended is normal.

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That would be running Spybot-SD to max or near max priority. :sad: In my perspective that is not good for the processor as it only has 256MB of RAM. The average Windows XP OS (as I know it) uses a 512MB as minimum. The maximum is 3GB for Windows. 4GB for Vista. To the point...

http://forums.spybot.info/showthread.php?t=27502&page=2

This link solved a member's slow scanning problem.

spybotsandra said:

Please run Spybot - Search & Destroy and switch to "Advanced mode" via the menu bar item "Mode" and select "Settings" --> "File Sets" in the left bar. There, please right-click somewhere into the list and choose "select all available checks".

Click to expand...

Please try that.

that was a scan that froze.

his completes, it just takes some time. If he does what i suggested and does not run any programs while he is scanning, he should be fine.

haha yeah i know

drragostea said:

Choose high-priority when there is no activity? I was just recommending the link above. Just gotta wait for the user's response. :santa:

Click to expand...

just making sure you got that part. we shall see what happens. Another thing to try is boot into safe mode and scan with all security software, see if anything improves.