Harddrive usage constantly at 100%

xandros9

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I use Avast!. It's indeed reporting that there's some bad programs on my pc but I can't remove them without paying... What anti-virus software should I use to clean up?

I'll try out that other possible solution btw!

That's not right, I use Avast personally if I want something heavier duty than MSE/Defender and it never asked for money to remove something. It advertises, but never did it hold the PC hostage. (I recommend a boot-time scan regardless, its my favorite feature.)

AVG is another option.
 

DennisvdG

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That's not right, I use Avast personally if I want something heavier duty than MSE/Defender and it never asked for money to remove something. It advertises, but never did it hold the PC hostage. (I recommend a boot-time scan regardless, its my favorite feature.)

AVG is another option.

I uninstalled and reinstalled Avast and now I'm doing a boot-time scan, it's been over an hour and the scan is at 2%. Is this normal? My guess is this scan is taking so ridiculously long because my disk usage is constantly at 100% and thus slowing everything down immensely...

If the rate at which files get scanned is anything to go by, it seems to be about 3 files per second... So this scan probably won't be done before friday...

Edit: I aborted the scan because not being able to use my pc for literally more than a day would drive me crazy, and I don't even know if this scan would solve anything.
 

xandros9

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Why don't you run some other diagnostics.

I had a friend who's PC would take hours to get even part-way through Windows 8's install process. It seemed fine otherwise, but it just seemed weird. I ran some disk diagnostics (it was some tool for WD disks in Hiren's Boot CD and it spat out some error.)
It shouldn't be that slow. The point of a boot-time scan is so there's no overhead, nothing to be used, etc. Just Avast and the PC.

Weird.
 

gpobernardo

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I uninstalled and reinstalled Avast and now I'm doing a boot-time scan, it's been over an hour and the scan is at 2%. Is this normal? My guess is this scan is taking so ridiculously long because my disk usage is constantly at 100% and thus slowing everything down immensely...

If the rate at which files get scanned is anything to go by, it seems to be about 3 files per second... So this scan probably won't be done before friday...

Edit: I aborted the scan because not being able to use my pc for literally more than a day would drive me crazy, and I don't even know if this scan would solve anything.

In behalf of xandros9, if your PC is performing a boot-time scan and if it similar to a boot-time defrag (where it runs before the log-on page), then whatever was causing the 100% disk usage is most probably not running. Rather, scanning time depends on how many files the software has to scan; more files and a larger hard drive mean more time.

For full PC scans, I leave my PC scanning over night - with a 1TB hard drive and 880.2GB of files, I usually find it "done" when I wake up 6 hours later. This is for Bitdefender.

Whether or not what you're experiencing with your Avast! is normal, xandros9 would be able to tell you more since it's been a long time since I last used Avast!.:smile:

Edit: xandros9 replied even before I could post this reply.:cool:
 

Yazen

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pankaj981

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Okay, here is something you should really do.

1) Go to add/remove programs and start whacking off software that you find fishy (adware, freeware, etc.)
2) I am not sure if you have any server products installed on your machine, this type of usage is usually associated with either a service continuously running or when a service is being unintentionally started (virus)
3) You did mention Avast was able to detect something. I haven't had issues with Avast from the past 4 years I have been using it but if you are having your doubts, instead of messing up with the cleaning I would rather prefer a backup and complete re-install. If you decide to do that make sure you backup your files onto a drive which can be completely scanned during the restore
4) One last thing you can (or should) try is to login in Safe Mode and see if you are seeing the heavy usage in that scenario too. If yes then I would definitely suggest 3)
 

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