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Defender Full Scan timed at 35 hours remaining, will it ever complete?

I have previously always used Defender on a timed quick scan, which takes a few minutes.

But today, having an hour or two of spare time, I thought I'd do a full scan for the first time.

It has now been running for 4 hours, has scanned 548000 files, and tells me estimated time remaining 35.50 hours.

This is truly ridiculous, since I cannot possibly leave the computer switched on for all that time.

Is it normal for this to take so long?

Hello! I am an Independent Advisor, I would love to help you out!

How big is your hard drive, and is it a hard drive or an SSD?

It can often take a long time depending on this two factors ad well as cpu speed.

Also, the estimate it gives is often times not very accurate.

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Thagstrom, thanks for reply.

It's a generic Chinese laptop with 500GB hard drive, about one third full.

CPU is Celeron N2840, speed 2.16GHz.

It's adequate for my work, I do no streaming or gaming.

Been 8 hours now. Scanned 1604000 files, 19 hours to go.

Why are there 1.6 million files on the drive? I probably have less than 100000 data files of my own.

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Hi pendlewitch

My name is Andre Da Costa; an Independent Consultant, Windows Insider MVP and Windows & Devices for IT MVP. I'm here to help you with your problem.

Its probably scanning every single file in the operating system. What I would do is scan outside of the operating system using a third party utility.

Use ESET Sysrescue offline scanner to scan and clean the computer, see instructions in the following article:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/clean-virus-in...

I would also try using the Windows Defender offline scanner:

https://www.groovypost.com/howto/remove-viruses...

Note: This is a non-Microsoft website. The page appears to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the site that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the site before you decide to download and install it.
Best regards,
Andre Da Costa
Independent Advisor for Directly

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Thank you for the information Andre.

The scan just finished, here is the result. See the number of files scanned!

I will instead just do quick scans only from now on.

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Thats a lot of files, but its not out of the ordinary. In future though, you should try using the Defender Offline scan or ESET Offline scan in the future, since both are faster.
Best regards,
Andre Da Costa
Independent Advisor for Directly

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Thank you for the information Andre.

The scan just finished, here is the result. See the number of files scanned!

I will instead just do quick scans only from now on.

Have you changed the folder option in explorer to view all hidden files? And The amount of files might very well be due to old previous installation files when Windows might have upgraded to a newer version and the Files would be located in your C drive in a folder called Windows.old. In regards to the amount of files you have and not in regards to why the scan ended up taking that long.

I do not speak on behalf of Microsoft directly as one of their consultants or Technicians. If my answer has helped you, please up-vote it.

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Last updated April 28, 2024 Views 8,497 Applies to: