MSE isn't so great afterall?

Satsumomo

Welp. I set a full system scan, on all my drives.

Halfway through, it tells me that "Potentially dangerous files have been detected, once the scan is complete you will be prompted to take action" or something along the lines of this.

It's about 5 or 6 hours in with the scan, and it's almost done. However I really needed to shut down my computer at that moment, and then I remembered that I had read that you could "pause" scanning on MSE. Or so I think I did.

Because I clicked on "Cancel" and all it did was cancel the damn thing. It didn't show me infected files it had already detected, nor it let me continue the scan from where it left off.

Did I do something wrong or is the overly simplistic UI not going to let me see what infected files it had already detected? Resuming a scan isn't something I absolutely need, but the whole BS of having to run a 5+ hour scan again to find those infected files again, and having to let it finish in order to do anything about it is just plain stupid.

Dizzen

While it is a pain not to know what was detected so far, removing only what was detected in a partial scan could give a false sense of security, as the infection may have spread to areas that had yet to be scanned. So while it may be inconvenient, this is working as intended.

TetraNitroCubane

Also note that if your computer is set to go to sleep, the scan will pause while it's sleeping. So if you set up a full scan, then walked away with your computer set to sleep in 20 min, it would scan for 20 min and then stop until brought out of sleep.

5-6 hours is ridiculous for any scanner. I wouldn't expect that unless you're running a Pentium III and scanning some massive amount of files.

Satsumomo

It was full system scan, no the quick one, and it was set to scan my computer (1TB) and my external HDD (500GB). All in all it's about 850GB+400GB.

I think it's intended use is dumb, maybe I want to get rid of those specific files quickly, or maybe I know the rest of my drive is clean. Argh. Oh well.

Mustachio Jones

MSE is designed to be a low-profile, slow scan. It isn't supposed to whip through your files. It doesn't use many resources, and as such, you can continue to use your machine while it's doing its thing.

Reboot

I don't think I would trust the result of a scan if it's paused before completion, system-rebooted, then resumed. Even if the antivirus is designed with this function, I'll be skeptical and constantly suspect that the virus may have changed its location or replicated itself in other parts of my system after the reboot (and therefore, I will re-do the entire scan without a reboot just for peace of mind).

I'm assuming that the problematic file(s) exist before MSE is installed, and hence MSE did not detect it when you first downloaded/copied/introduced the file(s) to your system environment.

Or maybe you can do a modular scan - start with just the Ext HDD first. if it's clean, disconnect it, then start on the Int HDD... etc.

Shorn Scrotum Man

Satsumomo wrote: »

It was full system scan, no the quick one, and it was set to scan my computer (1TB) and my external HDD (500GB). All in all it's about 850GB+400GB.

I think it's intended use is dumb, maybe I want to get rid of those specific files quickly, or maybe I know the rest of my drive is clean. Argh. Oh well.

...

If you have the ability to magically know what parts of your hard drive is clean then how the hell did you get a virus in the first place?

And how can you know which ones to delete without scanning them first?