Why Is My Virus Scan Taking So Long?

To really be sure your computer is protected, antivirus software must look inside every file to check it for infection. Even if your computer is relatively new, there are tens of thousands of files, software, utilities, log files, etc. To be completely thorough, files needs to be checked against a database of possible infections.

How does it do that?

An ever growing database of infections, updated frequently, contains virus fingerprints, a piece of code that is known to be unique to each known virus. Each virus fingerprint is different, sometimes only by a little. Your antivirus software opens one of the files on your computer then opens up and compares each fingerprint with all the code inside the file. It looks for every fingerprint in every file. If there are tens of thousands of files on your computer, and thousands of fingerprints in the database, well, the math gets into some pretty big numbers. As fast as your computer is, the sheer number of files multiplied by the number of virus fingerprints will do nothing but grow over time.

What can I do?

Limit the files your antivirus software searches. Once you perform an initial full virus scan it is not necessary to do full system scans every day. Most viruses come in email or internet or external sources like copies from other computers. These areas and files should be scanned frequently. Software installations, such as word processing, spreadsheets and tax/accounting software are not as susceptible to changes. If your antivirus software allows, you can schedule less frequent virus scans in those areas. You also reduce your risk if your computer is actively scanning for viruses with a firewall or antivirus active scan function. Periodic virus scans are still a good idea as firewalls may not catch every new virus, but you can cut down on the frequency of the file scans.

Why Is My Virus Scan Taking So Long?

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