Scanning time is killing my users

Scheduled Scans.


I have scheduled scans setup currently using on-demand default settings for v4 and v3 clients. The problem I am seeing is each scan takes over an hour to complete and most of that hour is frustration for our users because of decreased computer speed and in some instances an inability to perform job duties.



What can I do to decrease scan time?

 

I think you mean to decrease scan time, or you dislike your users that much?

What does your schedule look like now? daily/weekly? in-depth/smart?

Try to schedule it during break hours.

To decrease time it you could make some exclusions or disable scanning of archives or use the limits option provided in advanced settings.

 

Thank you for your reply.

Currently, We are doing in-depth weekly. What is the real difference between in-depth and smart?

Are there any recommended settings for optimized scanning times...

 

Perhaps this thread from late last year may help.

 

The main difference is the 'Smart Optimization' being enabled in the smart scan. Although there is not much being said about this option I guess it speeds up scanning. The help file doesn't clear much up either. 'With Smart Optimization enabled the most optimal settings are used to ensure the most efficient scanning level, while simultanneously maintaining the highest scanning speeds.' Should wait for a moderator to clear it up.

Also think about scheduling it once a month instead as well. V4 already scans part of the system at start-up and after each update and together with the real-time protection it should be able to detect near to all active malware on your system. I doubt you will find threats weekly on all those machines with the on-demand scan?

Also I think security wise it wouldn't matter if you exclude normal archives from on-demand scanning as malware in archives are no direct danger. If a archive will be opened/accessed the real-time protection should kick in.
As for recommend limit value's for these archives is more something to think about yourself.

 

Smart Scan
w/

Archives off
Adv Heuristics off
Unsafe apps off
unwanted apps off
email off


and it still took over an hour to complete

 

I suggest you contact ESET and open an incident ticket since something is amiss with your installation.

 

What do you mean? I setup the scan with those settings to try and decrease the time limit and frankly ESET support is lacking.

I spoke with a gentlemen from ESET a few weeks ago via email and eventually on the telephone and he had no idea you could even use IIS to host your updates. He kept telling me the reason some of my clients didn't update is because I didn't have "provide update files via internal HTTP server" checked.

After 10 minutes he finally understood or at least quit arguing with me that I couldn't use IIS.

The forum is a lot better for support.

 

I cannot speak to where ESET Support is lacking or not since I am not ESET Support, just an avid user.

If you choose the Forum for support so be it.

At least if you contacted ESET and had a support ticket ID, you could PM an ESET Mod here who could expedite the process.

At least that's my thinking.

Personally, speaking negatively of ESET support will gain you no friends here.
At least not with ESET support, but, that's just me

 

I really do appreciate your reply and thank you very much for any help and suggestions you might have. Please don't misunderstand me... I do appreciate your help. I am not trying to be negative about Eset support but only being honest about my experiences with the support I have had thus far.

 

Noted and thanks for a more positive stance, in my experience ESET support has been way above board from other AV Vendors.

While I cannot give you a defintive answer to your query, someone will.

Best of luck !

 

It still takes over a hour with all those settings turned off? shocking.. Did it decrease any time at all?

How many drives is it scanning? and how much files are there being scanned?
Your sure your not scanning any network drives?

On my office computer (P4 3Ghz 1GB) the smart scan with default settings scanned 87380 files in 18 minutes, used space is around 16GB.
(I know it ain't that much, its a fresh install of W7 and default apps).

Seems to me either those disk are really full and/or badly fragmented. Might want to try a disk defragmenter to optimize the disk and/or try to clean up as many (temp) files as possible. I know it harder to do so in a network environments but there are ways to accomplish it.

Cleaning up old user profiles can be a time saver as well.

 

Schedule the scan for when users are not at the computer.
We get users to leave computers on 1 night a week & schedule scan for then. Can also schedule OS updates for the same time.