antivirus faster scan -> 100% cpu

[panyan]

is there a good antivirus that i can install/boot to which will scan a drive as quick as possible (using full bandwidth)?


im sick of waiting for full system scans to finish when its only using 5-10% cpu

 

[panyan]

It will scan as fast as the drive can read the data.

which AV are you referring to? as ive used ones that scan SIGNIFICANTLY slower than the drive throughput rate

 

[panyan]

A full thorough scan does take longer though, and I can see it only maxes out 1 core. So it's probably poorly multi-threaded.

Exactly, hence my quest for a AV utility what will max out throughput and scan the drive as quick as possible

 

[panyan]

cant you set the scan schedule to scan in the middle of the night when your sleeping?

On my personal machine: yes. But when i go to friends and family i usually give their computers a once-over and having to wait for their computers to do a full system scan is excruciating.

Everyone uses different AV programs which is why i was ideally looking for a utility i can install/boot to that will just scan it all in as quick a time as possible.

Have you tried setting the process priority to high?

i havent but will give it a go

you realise you dont need to sit and watch a scan?

it isnt the watching that is the problem, it is the length of time to do a scan

you dont really need to do a full scan anyway, any file windows access' will get scanned anyway. anything a full scan picks up that the realtime scanner misses was not active anyway

I do not want discuss the advantages/disadvantages of full system scans; I am asking for a utility that i can install/boot to that will do a full system scan with max throughput so it is done quicker

I can't see any mention of what anti-virus you are currently using. But have you tried Microsoft Security Essentials, I've found it to be quite reliable for a free AV and its also light on resources.

I use that on my personal machine. But i often deal with all sorts of AV so i dont want to learn how to configure every one for a faster scan.

Not sure it uses the full speed of a disk drive but I've not had any problem using a PC when it's running a scan and this is on older hardware. Load times are higher but that's to be expected. One other nice feature is being able to set the percentage of the CPU it can use.

The single core is maxed out as I presume you have a SATA drive rather than SCSI.

the only core that is being used is often no more than 15%

 

[panyan]

http://superantispyware.com/ has a CPU booster function to speed it up.

brilliant, thanks very much