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Windows Security Essentials
Stoic Joker:
The scan time thing is by design. The intent being that the computer is still usable during the scan (which does take awhile...), instead of being completely crippled for a few hours like most of the main stream AV suites out there.
My testing was done with a 600GB RAID 5 array that's divided into 3 partitions and has less then 200GB free space between them. File types are a mixture of all sizes from tons of plain text (code) files to multi GB DVD images.
The scan took close to 24 hours as I recall, but... the machine was at all points usable. If it wasn't for my having task manager running I'd have probably never know it was running. This is what MS was after with MSE; get people to run it, and then leave it running. Most people under normal circumstances will turn off the AV antics so they can get on with their lives. This is why AV companies started making their product harder & harder (if not impossible (NIS)) to disable.
Innuendo:
Not sure if it was something in the settings, but it only showed a partial list and went and took automatic action on a number of files that wasn't in the list, some of them being deleted and not quarantined, others being "cleaned" so there would be some difficulty in restoring them if you didn't have a backup.-app103 (October 10, 2009, 10:37 PM)
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Unacceptable behavior. Every file that the scanner wishes to 'fix' should be in a complete itemized list with a level of user interaction that lets me decide what to do with the file. This behavior of "automatic action" on their part results in the behavior of "automatic recommend against using" on my part.
The other thing that bothered me was how it listed what it found. It did it in groups according to they type of malware found in the file and there was only an option to take action on the entire group and not individual files.
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Again, unacceptable behavior. I have files that most scanners find to be "evil" to one degree or another that I want to keep & if I wish to keep them that behavior shouldn't result in my having to keep software I would rather be cleansed.
Considering this experience, I will be returning to using Avira. Maybe I'll try MSE again in a few years when it's faster and asks permission before deleting/cleaning anything.
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MS is obviously tailoring this effort towards people with little or no computer knowledge who have no desire to change that.
Innuendo:
The scan time thing is by design. The intent being that the computer is still usable during the scan (which does take awhile...), instead of being completely crippled for a few hours like most of the main stream AV suites out there.-Stoic Joker (October 11, 2009, 07:40 AM)
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If that's by design then it should state that fact plainly before the operation starts. It's only polite behavior for a program to inform me of how long something is going to take if it is going to take over two and a half days (that's 60 hours) to complete.
Most people under normal circumstances will turn off the AV antics so they can get on with their lives.
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And most people under normal circumstances upon starting an AV scan that informs them that the operation is going to take anywhere from 24 to 60 hours are going to quickly abort it so they can get on their lives. A scan time that long would definitely be what you would call an "AV antic" in my book. A lot of people don't leave their computers on 24/7 and anything over 8 hours is pushing it. Any of these people running MSE will never complete a full computer scan.
Carol Haynes:
Any of these people running MSE will never complete a full computer scan.
-Innuendo (October 11, 2009, 10:31 AM)
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Depends if it resumes where it left off after a reboot.
Bamse:
Default actions are decided in settings, all can be forced Quarantine if that is preferred. Recommended means alert level decide so at least severe and high is automated. False positives do not exist so not a problem 8)
I dont really get slow speed complaint. Full is full, quick is quick - like every other scanner. Same relationship to me in duration. No difference when they all scan every file which they rarely do. Will use "Smartscan" or other term unless forced, no reason to waste time so skip as much as possible.. MSE seems to scan everything unless exclude settings have been used. I have not noticed sleep-scanning either. Wonder if I have a genuine copy or it is a rouge :)
But weird scanner. I started a full scan 15 min ago, sprints away with 250000 items in 15 minutes. Then comes to a program folder with small video editor. Almost stops completely and use 4 minutes on that little program alone. Has 22 exe-files though but other exe-files are scanned fast so no explanation. Now sprinting again. I did not use cpu for other things so no idle trick to comfort computing, guess it just needed a break or to contact HQ! If such breaks are common time will stand still.
I guess missing pause button during full scan is explained by sleep/restore trick.
So a bit over 1 hour for 1.1 million items in 187.023 files. Not bad I think. If I use Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool it is not even half done at 1 hour. Will take 2.5 hours or so. No tricks from Kaspersky with on-demand scanner and files set to all :)
I had 2 severe infections (known) and could chose action for each one. May be because I use quarrantine and not "Recommended" as default action. What is tricky is if you dont chose an action within may be 3-4 minutes MSE does it for you. Not much time to research! And up pops a green windows, all cleared and now in history. So do not hesitate. This also points at qurrantine as best setting. I think auto-fix countdown comes from the setting under default action "Apply recommended actions: Help protect your computer by applying the actions above..." Not clear because they use the word "recommended" which is also an action. So Quranntine is new "recommended action" and will be applied automatically if that box is ticked? Which it is per default.
I still think main worry is resident behavoir. Diagnose with Process monitor, exclude stuff. Sooner or later it gets randomly greedy with cpu usage. I use Qsel and when I open up a new category window become white for may be 15-20 secs. Not always but often. Well not anymore because now qsels files are excluded. But not too convincing. Must have to do with shortcuts and MSE sniffing original folder/files. One of the severe infections I had was not even on C: but D: - file was placed as a recent file/shortcut on C:. So it take off when getting a hint. I also read on their forum that some had fixed cpu spikes by turning off desktop=shortcuts. Annoying.
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