I have been using Norton Antivirus for about seven years, and the current version installed on my computer is Norton Internet Security 2004 for Windows 98/Me/2000/XP. While it is normal for more files to be scanned as time goes on, resulting from downloads, new installations, or saved files, I have recently had a large jump in the number of scanned files that appear in the scan results.
A scan on May 25 showed 121,995 files.
A scan on May 27 showed 122,530 in the morning (it found one adware threat that Ad-Aware and SpyBot did not catch, and the threat was deleted).
After the deletion of the threat, there were 122459 (The threat still appeared, but with it's location in the recycle bin).
Upon emptying the recycle bin, another scan showed 122,460 files scanned.
So far, nothing had been out of the ordinary.
Being the virus-paranoid individual that I am (and forgetful of the fact that I had a scheduled scan set up for Fridays), I started another scan for good measure (as the internet had been used quite a bit that day) before turning off the comp for the day, and about 4 minutes before the scheduled scan was to start and left the room.
The scan results showed 123827 files. The activity log showed two scans started minutes apart, both ending at the same time (to the minute), one of which had 123827 files and the other 121924 files.
Being very slightly computer literate and attempting to become more skilled in the field, I decided to investigate, so the next morning I ran another scan, which came up with 124161 files.
So in one day the file number jumped from 122530 to 123827, and a scan run the next day right after startup showed 124161.
I have not downloaded, saved, copied, created, or installed anything in that period of time, besides the Norton automatic updates that install by themselves, but can hardly take up that much room.
Norton, Ad-Aware, SpyBot, Panda, and TrendMicro Housecall did not detect any viruses or other threats. I have a firewall up and had visited the same sites I had been to for the past month or so with no prior increase in file size.
Does anyone know why the files scanned size increased? And can a computer be damaged if Norton runs two scans at once?
Thanks in advance (and for reading this lengthy post through to the end)!
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