so i was recently told that a website i frequent had a malware breakout and that they recommended AVG to scan your files, i currently use Avira Security free, i did a quick scan with Avira and nothing came back, and i thought about doing a full scan but avira takes over 24 hours to do a full scan on my computer since it quite literally scans every single file. however i ran a deep scan on AVG free, and it only took an hour which makes me question if it even checks every file? How does that work? Cause i have so many pictures and all these small files that while they dont take a lot of space, you would think AVG still would scan them no? and that it would take longer than an hour, because even before i started using avira, avast took roughly the same amount of time for a full scan? and i know AVG isnt that fast, because the scan time depends on your hardware no?
There are a lot of settings for thoses scanners, I will give you possible reasons
-avg scanner maybe skipping files larger than x
-avg scanner maybe skipping files with x extensions
-avg scanner maybe scan specific small parts of files known to be virus free, like mp4 files
Now I will list reasons that maybe linked back to the scanners themselves, maybe avg uses a different more efficient hasing algorithm “though I think they all use md5”, maybe if avg already scanned the file earlier it won’t scan it again if it’s not changed.
i just downloaded it for the first time and it was my first scan, but how do i check if it skips certain file extensions?
See the settings, advanced scan settings, I haven’t played with avg for a long time ago
it doesn’t specify it just says “content based types- files that are typically vulnerable to malware are scanned) and then an option to choose what types of files to scan but it just says (Files with recommended extensions or all files)
Post a screenshot please
https://imgur.com/a/pEM5Fjm one is the file shield and the other is the scans settings, im just trying to find exactly what files it scans?
If you check
Scan all archives
Scan all files
In the scan settings pane, you will get a very very slow scan, like avira scan time
i figured, at this point i’ve had my main question answered im now just curious as to what files the default settings scans
Executable files: exe, com, ps1, bat, cmd, vbs, scr, pif, etc.
Libraries: dll
Html files, JavaScript files
Archives like: msi, cab
Usually it doesn’t scan images, videos, iso files, etc.
A better av engine checks file type by content header, not merely the ending extension, since you can rename
Virus.exe to virus.png