[busydad]

hi i recently added another hard drive to my computer. i migrated all my files to the new drive using seagate's software and everything went very well. i made the new hard drive the c drive and and kept the old one in as backup and storage as the f drive. as i said everything went well except this current problem. i use super anti spyware and avg anti spyware for protection,and avg anti virus for virus protection. my problem is that both spyware programs hang up when they get to the file "system volume". also avg anti virus would not scan through either. i recently tried uninstalling avg anti virus and installed "anti-vir" as my virus program and it too hangs at the same point.
i have configured super anti spyware to skip this file and it then runs through. i cant find any where to configure anti-vir to not scan specific files and i would really like to solve the problem anyway so that i can scan these files normally . any ideas?

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It's not a problem you have. That folder is 'protected' so av and anti-spyware utilities can't access it. It contains the System Restore Points.
See this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531

[pip22]

It's not a problem you have. That folder is 'protected' so av and anti-spyware utilities can't access it. It contains the System Restore Points.
See this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309531

[busydad]

thanks for your help. i read the tutorial from microsoft and i dont get the connection. am i supposed to hide or show the files? also the files were "shown" before i did the drive change and all the scanning programs worked. if the programs are configured to not scan this file why is it trying to? ill try and "hide the files and run a scan. again,thanks for your help, ill let you know what happens

[busydad]

i have two computers and i configured them both identically,"hiding the view of protected system files" and ran super anti spyware on both as a test. i checked to see that scan options were configured the same for both computers. the computer in question again hung up at "c:\system volume information" and just hung there all night. the other computer completed its scan just fine. when i look in windows explorer at the file tree,the files"system volume" and"RECYCLER" are ghosted out(on both the c and f drive) as if they were missing or whatever that means. i tried flushing old restore points, and a few days later i used the restore function and it worked normally. also within that time period i uninstalled avg anti virus and avg anti spyware,and installed anti-vir as my virus protection. after a clean install,i ran a scan with anti-vir and it hung at system volume just sat at that point all night until i stopped the scan. i then configured it to skip these files on both the c and f drive and ran another scan and it ran through normally with no detections. any thoughts on my problem? thanks for your time.

[pip22]

Sorry I've been so long replying but I don't have my forum options set to receive thread notifications. I receive dozens of emails every day (less than 6 of these are spam) so I have to put some controls on what I receive otherwise I'd never cope with it all.

Whether or not you enable or disable the view settings for hidden or system files won't make any difference to how your AV scanner ( or spyware scanner) deals with them or what problems it has with them. The 'view' settings are for the benefit of the user only -- what files he/she is able to view. The 'ghosted out' folder means it's a hidden folder and is nothing to worry about, it's normal. That's how Windows displays 'hidden' folders when you've configured Windows to 'show' them.

I use a commercial AV product (Kaspersky) and I have no problems with that, neither do I have to configure it to ignore certain folders.
I'm pleased to see, however, that you've gotten round your problem by telling AntiVir to ignore the folders which cause it to 'hang'.
When I used to use AVG Antivirus, it would always complete the scan without 'hanging' but it did show that it "could not scan System Volume Information because it is protected". The reason kaspersky gives me no trouble is probably because I have System Restore (SR) turned off.
But that's a matter of personal preference. SR rarely works anyway, hogs a fair amount of disk-space, and I prefer to use my home-made Recovery image when I need to. Unlike SR, that never lets me down and is always virus-free.

AS an aside to all this, if your AV does find an infection which you successfully manage to clean up or delete, you should also immediately delete all the Restore Points because the infection could have been 'saved' inside one of them (Which your AV program can't get at). You delete all the Restore Points by turning SR off, then on again. Again, you might consider leaving it turned off, which would solve your AV problem. I don't recommend that though if you don't have an image (clone) of your C: drive as I do.

Edited by pip22, 02 April 2008 - 01:43 PM.