HitmanPro.ALERT Support and Discussion Thread

That does not sound right. How many GB's are you scanning, and what are your system specs?

 

Also, have you tried running Disk Clean-up?

 

I would add that if a scan is taking that long, you either have some serious software conflicts, or an imminent HDD failure on your hands...

 

You can try to deinstall HMP.A and if the system-scan is again 9-10 hours long then you know that there is some other software conflict and in this case HMP.A is not the culprit.

 

Since Norton is blocking HMPA functionality, I would start there with my trouble shooting. Norton may have caused corruption of some files, or registry keys used by HMPA. You may have to uninstall HMPA, and reinstall it again. Then disable Norton before you do your scan. If that does not work you may have to uninstall Norton to know for sure if that's the problem if you think it's worth the trouble. Hopefully the developer (Erik or Mark Loman) will swing by here soon to help you trouble shoot the problem. They will better know what the problem may be before anyone else.

 

OS: Vista HP SP2 x64
CPU: Pentium Dual E2200
RAM: 8GB
HDD: Seagate ST500DM002-1BD142

The HDD has 159GB free of 454GB. That's about where the usage has been for a couple of years.

 

I ran it a few days ago but am running it again right now just in case.

 

The HDD is barely a year old, but of course newness is no guarantee. By coincidence, I was getting ready to move the system over to an SSD (even though Vista doesn't have TRIM). Maybe the HDD is angry at being replaced and is acting up on me.

Just checked the history of the Norton full-system scan from the night before. There were no obvious events associated with HMP.A.

 

Question (also for @mood): If I uninstall HMP.A, then when I re-install it will the program remember my license key, or will I have to enter it by hand?

 

Are you running any other security besides Norton and HMPA? If not, I would uninstall HMPA and run a manual Norton scan.

 

Yes, Windows Defender (the original, anti-malware version) and Spybot Search & Destroy 1.6.2.46. But both of these have been on the machine since the beginning (8 years).

 

If the scan runs normally without HMPA, then you will have a choice. If settings exclusions in Norton does not help, then you will probably have to replace one or the other with something else.

 

Yeah, but that muddies up the problem isolation process. Too many players. Take them all off temporarily, then add them back one at a time, starting with Norton.

Then run a scan and see if it is back to normal. If it is normal, then add HMPA, and run the Norton scan again, and so forth ...

 

If I uninstall HMP.A, will I have to re-enter the product key when reinstalling it, or will it "remember" the product key?

Pending the answer, I'll start by disabling Windows Defender and running a Norton full-system scan. Could take a while for the result to come back.

 

The license key will be remembered, but not the settings. You can use the HMP.A-GUI to backup the settings.

 

Very good, thanks!

 

Testing process completed. Norton scan remains just as long.

Trying to think of possible alternative causes, I wondered if the 3-year-old hard drive was going bad, but tests with HDTune haven't shown anything unusual.

 

I haven't used Norton for a while, but I remember that there was an option where it would trust files after scanning them and exclude those files in future scans to speed things up (Norton Insight?). Perhaps something has gone wrong with that?

 

I tried Norton about 10 years ago, and then took them up on their money back guarantee, and got a refund. It was a very poor performer on my system at the time (Win XP). Brought everything to a crawl.

 

A LOT has changed in those 10 years. It is one of the lightest tested here:

http://chart.av-comparatives.org/chart1.php?chart=chart4&year=2017&month=5&sort=1

 

That's probably true. Maybe there was something else in conflict with my system even back in the day. But the right thing for me was to move on. Became a big fan of Avast after that. There are even a few better options now.

But when someone posts that the Norton scan is taking many hours to complete, something is obviously wrong. If he is correctly reporting that he has removed/disabled all other security apps, then there is something else in his system configuration that Norton is not happy with.

Another possibility is that just disabling a security app does not always stop their service or drivers that they may install. Sometimes a clean uninstall is required to eliminate the competing software completely.

Otherwise, may be time for him to find an alternative to Norton. Just saying ...

 

@JEAM ,

One other thing that can cause Norton to take ages to finish Full System Scans is Compressed File Scan. I have seen that causing issues reported on the Norton forums quite a few times, although it hasn't affected my machines. You could try disabling that and test.

Settings > Antivirus > Scans and Risks tab > Compressed File Scan > Off > Apply.

That will just stop Norton scanning zipped files, which can't harm your machine until they are extracted, and real-time protection will kick in then.

 

Avira scans compressed files without issue. Norton should fix their software bugs if that is a long-term known problem.

 

Agreed, but it obviously doesn't affect all systems as none of my machines are affected. Maybe it is only certain compressed files.

 

Thanks, I changed that setting and also added to the Trusted list several files that seemed to take an extra long time to get "exonerated." After this, the Full Scan time went from 9-10 hours to 6:15 hours. Not as good as it used to be (~4:30), but definitely better.

I went into the Norton forum and noticed that, since late in July, some people have complained about slow scans. That would jibe with my own observations. We'll see if they fix it.

Anyway, the problem doesn't seem to be related to HMP.A.