Huge virlog.dat File

Greetings, all.

I have a customer using NOD32 and NOD32 Remote Administrator on his SBS2003 server. Checking his C: disk for free space recently, I found that the NOD32 file virlog.dat was over a gigabyte!

I have looked through all the options for NOD32 and RA, but can't seem to find anything that reduces the size of this file. He has had no intrusions, nor has any virus affected his system, just this humongous file taking up valuable space. I didn't just want to delete it, in case it was something important, but can someone tell me what is supposed to be logged to this file, how to reduce its size, and keep it small?

Peace.

 

That's strange.... I've just checked my "virlog.dat" file and it was only about 53 bytes

 

@El_Man

If the file is in C:\Program files\ESET\Logs\ and is called virlog.dat

Then this is the file which contains information for all threats detected by NOD32 (real-time protection) on the specific computer . You can see it in Control Center -> Logs -> Threat log

If this is the file it can be deleted . As for this computer , goto Control Center -> NOD32 System Tools -> NOD32 System Setup , press Setup , "Log Maintenance" tab and check the settings/reduce it

 

Thanks for that, problem solved.

It took an age for the options on the tab to come up, no doubt due to the huge file size. I set the log file options to 2 days, in the hope it would parse the file down - but it didn't. Even stopping and restarting NOD32 didn't do it (perhaps I should have restarted the machine, but at the time, that wasn't an option).

So I later took the machine to Safe Mode, and deleted the file, and on rebooting it was recreated with a size of 1Kb. Had to do it that way as the NOD32 kernel task was still present, and as it still held virlog.dat open, I couldn't touch it. And you all know Eset say you can't stop the kernel service, even as an Admin.

The huge file is gone now, but I will continue to keep an eye on that machine in case it happens again.