File count increasing dramatically

[Guest]

Run norton anti virus 06 full system scan on xp sp2 weekly for over a year.
Used to get about 85000 files scanned. Went to 95000 a month ago and ilast
Friday nights scan hit 135000 files counted and took over 3 hours to run.
All temp files were deleted, as well as norton protected. Also deleted ie
history prior to re-running the scan. This decreased the count by 5000, but
still getting about 35000 extra files than I did not have just a month ago
and no idea where they are coming from. All the xp updates from 4/10-11 were
installed. All Norton can recommend is running the scan in safe mode. No
new programs other than an updated flash player from a Walgreens photo cd
have been installed. Using the find files utility has not been helpful.
Spyware Doctor and Norton indicate no virus or spyware. Anyone got a clue?

 

[Uwe Sieber]

Run norton anti virus 06 full system scan on xp sp2 weekly for over a year.
Used to get about 85000 files scanned. Went to 95000 a month ago and ilast
Friday nights scan hit 135000 files counted and took over 3 hours to run.
All temp files were deleted, as well as norton protected. Also deleted ie
history prior to re-running the scan. This decreased the count by 5000, but
still getting about 35000 extra files than I did not have just a month ago
and no idea where they are coming from. All the xp updates from 4/10-11 were
installed. All Norton can recommend is running the scan in safe mode. No
new programs other than an updated flash player from a Walgreens photo cd
have been installed. Using the find files utility has not been helpful.
Spyware Doctor and Norton indicate no virus or spyware. Anyone got a clue?

Get SequoiaView: http://www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview

It's great for finding large or many small files.



Uwe

 

[Guest]

Thanks Uwe,

Yes this is a very powerful tool. Kind of picks up where Windows Explorer
drops off. It appears that almost all the extra files were created by
Symantec themselves as the creation dates closely match the dates when
Microsoft sent out their 4 XP patches/updates for April 2007. Now why the
Symantec tech did not know this is curious and frankly I am a little
surprised others have not had the same problem. One of the things that was
throwing me off is that I try to always keep 2/3 of the space on my disk
available due to the large volume of files created by my home surveillance
system and so the actual disk size had not grown. I am still trying to
figure out a way for SequoiaView to give me an actual file count in addition
to specifying size. In the meantime I think it is time to purge some
programs I never use in order to get the scheduled Norton runs to run faster.
Coulld have sworn the
Find Files utility used to allow specifying a creation date in older Windows
operating systems.

Rob

 

[Uwe Sieber]

If you found the folder with the files you can right
click in SeqView and choose 'Explore'. Here right
click on the folder -> Properties. It shows the number
of files.


Greetings from Germany

Uwe

 

[Guest]

I am very impressed with this utility and will tell others about it. Seems
like something Microsoft or a competitor (Linux) should bundle with their
operating systems.

Believe I have finally figured out why the Norton Anti-Virus files scanned
count does not reconcile to the actual count of files on my hard drive
(including any boot files- i think there is just 1 anyway?). When a file on
the disk is scanned, and it is a known target for virus/spyware attack, it is
then matched against the Nortons Anti-Virus definitions that are applicable
to that particular file. Some program files, like Java files, are
particularly susceptible. For each virus definition that is applicable the
scanned file's "code" is then matched against it. Therefore, a file may be
matched dozens or even hundreds of times. Each time it is matched the file
scan count increases, even though it is the same hard disk file being matched
against a different definition each time. I tested this theory by setting up
a custom scan of just the Java folder in Program Files. There are a total of
564 files in this folder and 30 "sub" folders. The scan finished saying
there were 17000 files. This (I think) explains the wide discrepancy in
counts. And now I know the time it takes for a scan to run will only
increase over time, even if I get rid of some unused programs. Of course the
Symantec techs will not tell you this, they will just say perhaps the Norton
files are corrupted and to uninstall and then reinstall the program which I
did and it made no difference.

I like German dogs (Great Danes, Weimaraners) and beers (Becks, Bitburger,
Saint Pauli Girl). I also like a lot of German automobiles (BMW, Porsche,
Mercedes), but they are very expensive.

Regards from the USA,

Rob