my virus scan software

[withing]

I have the Windows Live OneCare, and it's always worked in the past. But! For the past week, every time I try to run a virus scan, it will run for days (and I mean days), and get to about 6% of the computer scanned, then start over. I even opened the guest account, stopped everything but Windows and the virus scan (used the task manager to make sure), took out the wireless card, and let it run overnight last night. That didn't work either - not only did the virus scan not finish, it shut down before it finished. That's not happened before.

When I contacted the company, they said it was probably a third party program - not sure how that could be since nothing else was running. I've run a cleaner and cleaned out all of the extra files. I'm thinking of downloading something like Adaware to see if there's spyware involved.

Other than being super slow, the computer seems to run okay.

Any suggestions?

[MikeInVa]

I'd suggest taking your PC to the shop to have it looked at by a professional,slowdowns could very well be a sign of possible spyware infection which can totally destroy your system(same thing happened to me 3 years ago) & once that happens it ends up costing you more to repair than it's worth.

I'm having my own trouble with norton antivirus myself...my subscription expired & I tried to renew online & wouldn't you just know it? They took my $40 bucks & ran with it,sure my antivirus software will still scan the system but if it detects any viruses it can't do anything to contain or remove them.

[resonance]

Try Spybot: http://spybot.com/en/index.html

I've found it to find more things than ad-aware. It is free as well.

Do you update your virus definitions regularly?

Does your Windows auto-update itself, or did you update it recently?

When you used the task manager were you stopping the applications or did you go to the processes tab and end processes? Did you shut down the stuff in the notifications area of the taskbar too?

Maybe try a trial version of a different anti-virus software?

[withing]

Try Spybot: [link=http://spybot.com/en/index.html"'>http://spybot.com/en/index.html" target="_blank]http://spybot.com/en/index.html[/link]

I've found it to find more things than ad-aware. It is free as well.

I'll try that.

Do you update your virus definitions regularly?

Yes, the software updates daily.

Does your Windows auto-update itself, or did you update it recently?

Windows updates itself.

When you used the task manager were you stopping the applications or did you go to the processes tab and end processes? Did you shut down the stuff in the notifications area of the taskbar too?

There was nothing running in the applications tap, I went into the processes tab and shut down anything I knew shouldn't be running - basically, anything unfamiliar. And, yep, I shut down everything in the taskbar except the virus software.

Maybe try a trial version of a different anti-virus software?

I thought about doing that, but then I would have to uninstall this one first, :-( and that's such a pain in the ass. I'll do that as a last ditch effort if I can't get it to scan by the end of the weekend.

[MikeInVa]

I have the same thing with regards to windows auto updates & it's sometimes annoying as hell to find that your system has reset(I leave mine running 24/7) but there's one thing you need to be careful about when ending processes via task manager.

I'd read somewhere(one of my software manuals IIRC) that you have to be careful in what processes you choose to end from the list because,if you accidently select the wrong one it could very well mess up your windows OS requiring a trip to the shop to get it repaired.