Daily Threat scan taking 6 hours

[C-Puff]

For the past week or so my daily threat scan using Malwarebytes premium has taken such a long time I eventually pause the scan and just resume the next day. Yesterday it took so long I cancelled the scan and rescheduled the scan to start earlier in the day, thinking maybe it would help.

Today's scan (10 November) started at 6:30pm and it is now 12:31 at night and the scan is still going. I've had this program for YEARS and it's never behaved like this. My entire laptop is functioning at a CRAWL and it's a nightmare trying to get any kind of work done n any way.

This is ridiculous!

[Malwarebytes]

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[exile360]

Greetings,

That's definitely not normal.  Please do the following to see if it helps:

1. Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool
2. Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair)
3. Click the Clean button, and allow it to restart your system and then reinstall Malwarebytes, either by allowing the tool to do so when it offers to on restart, or by downloading and installing the latest version from here
   

Also, just in case this is due to some sort of problem with the drive, I'd recommend backing up your data so that you don't lose anything important.  If you need guidance we have a list of various backup solutions and utilities posted here.  Imaging the entire drive to an external drive using one of the imaging solutions such as Macrium would be a good idea in addition to backing up any important files and documents from the system to a USB drive or some other external media so that you have quick access to them if needed.

If the issue still persists please provide diagnostic logs so that we may take a look and try to determine what's causing the issues:

1. Run the Malwarebytes Support Tool
2. Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair)
3. Click the Gather Logs button, and once it completes, attach the zip file it creates on your desktop to your next reply
   

Please let us know how it goes and provide the requested diagnostic logs if the issue still continues.

Thanks

[C-Puff]

Ok, I'll give it a try, thank you! I need to go to bed for the day (I had to cancel the scan) and I'll update this thread if it works or not.

Thanks for the reply!

[exile360]

You're welcome, have a good rest, and hopefully the reinstall works, but we'll do our best to help if it doesn't.

[C-Puff]

Sorry for the delay. My windows decided to update today because of course it did.

I did the clean and reinstalled Malwarebytes without any difficulty or upsets as instructed. I have the text document with the log should it be needed.

I'm running a scan but it's a little late at night again (thanks, Windows 10) and I'll let know as soon as it completes.

[Porthos]

Just now, C-Puff said:

I'm running a scan but it's a little late at night again (thanks, Windows 10) and I'll let know as soon as it completes.

If your threat scan is manually run, Do not do any thing else at all with the computer as that will slow it and your computer down. Also if you have check for rootkits enabled, that will also affect the scan.

Also if you have a large drive and lots of data and if it is not an SSD. It affects the scan speed as well.

Be sure your scan is NOT a custom scan of the entire drive as well.

[C-Puff]

Completed the scan in an hour and a half almost exactly. I did a threat scan just as-is after the reinstall so I haven't turned on any sort of custom scan changes or anything like that. I'll double check to see if I have rootkits enabled.

But an hour and a half for a full threat scan is MUCH better than waiting 6 hours and eventually having to cancel a scan altogether.

Thank you so much for the help It seems to have done the trick!

[Porthos]

2 minutes ago, C-Puff said:

Completed the scan in an hour and a half almost exactly.

 Could you post the log from that scan please.

[exile360]

An hour and a half is still a pretty long time for a threat scan with Malwarebytes; typical scan times range from a few minutes to maybe half an hour on most systems.  It's certainly a drastic improvement over 6 hours, however I still suspect something isn't right with the system.

[C-Puff]

Sure thing!

scanlog12112020.txt

[exile360]

OK, I believe I see what the issue is.  Your system must have a large number of items in one or more of the default locations that the Threat scan checks as your log shows over 400,000 items scanned compared to mine which has fewer than 300,000.

[C-Puff]

Ah ok that makes sense. I actually say my hard drive was reaching full so I've been cleaning up as it is (I was working on video editing which resulted in a very large number of clips and video files). But that sounds ok. That's something I can fix without it being a programming fault or a system failure or something

Thank you so much again for your and Porthos' help!

[Porthos]

Mine is below. Keep in mind I have a SSD an older I7 and 32 gigs of ram.

Can you please collect and upload as an attachment the diagnostic data using our MBST?

• Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool
• Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair)
• Click the Gather Logs button, and once it completes, attach the zip file it creates on your desktop to your next reply

 

[Porthos]

One with rootkit scanning and scan within archives enabled.

 

[C-Puff]

Ok! Just be aware I am on an ASUS "gaming" laptop so I suspect my machine is not super fast in comparison. (However the scans used to take 15 minutes at most on this same machine which is why I felt this had to be an error of some kind as I've used Malwarebytes for about 3 years now)

I'll attach the log once I've set it going,I'm just letting know I did see this in case it takes a while for whatever reason.

[exile360]

It may also be related to the drive being almost full.  When that happens it can definitely impact the drive's performance.  I will reiterate that just in case this is due to some sort of hardware issue such as the drive being on its way out, please make sure you have any important data backed up and if needed, an image backup of the system (in case you need to have the OS itself and installed programs backed up as well).

[C-Puff]

I'm afraid I can't really see where to turn on rootkits (sorry, I'm not very good with this kind of thing) and I'm probably just missing it, but here's the log I ran which I hope can be useful all the same.

mbst-grab-results.zip

[Porthos]

7 minutes ago, C-Puff said:

ut here's the log I ran which I hope can be useful all the same.

One of the logs got cut off in the grab. Lets get it separately.

Please download Farbar Recovery Scan Tool and save it to your desktop.

Note: You need to run the version compatible with your system.
You can check here if you're not sure if your computer is 32-bit or 64-bit

• Double-click to run it. When the tool opens click Yes to disclaimer.
• Press the Scan button.
• It will make a log (FRST.txt) in the same directory the tool is run. Please attach it to your reply.
• The first time the tool is run, it also makes another log (Addition.txt). Please attach it to your reply as well.

Thank you

 

[exile360]

To enable rootkit scanning for your manual scans, open settings by clicking the small gear icon in the upper right of the Malwarebytes UI, then go to the Security tab and it will be the first option listed under the Scan options section.  Once that's enabled, your subsequent manual scans will include the rootkit scan.

[C-Puff]

Sorry for the delay. I was very busy with work this week.

It's still giving my trouble with scans taking about 3 hours sometimes and the number of items scanned freezing at a certain number before continuing. I'll be following the added instructions here tomorrow to try and fix this.

[exile360]

Thank you for the update.  I hope the drive isn't failing, but it could just be a quirk with the filesystem causing it.

[C-Puff]

Hello.

Sorry for the long delay. I've been tied up with work.

I'm having more problems. I tried downloading the program Porthos suggested but my entire system freaked out and it was repeatedly flagged as a trojan. On top of this, when I tried to run it it seemed to open like a regular program but then not give me any further commands or instructions as an installing program would. My windows also one point strongly urged me not to run it. I've had to remove it with my windows threat detector eventually.

My malwarebytes is now taking 15 to 17 hours to do a daily scan. Often not completing it in a 6 hour time window before retrying the next day on the same scan.

When I cancelled the daily scan today after 17 hours, it asked to be updated. I did so and it requested my laptop restart which I did. However, upon logging back into windows, I now cannot open Malwarebytes at all and it gives me the error "could not reach service".

I'm sorry to keep coming back to this but I'm rather frustrated by this point. Especially since while Malwarebytes is virus scanning it takes up a bit of my RAM which makes working difficult as everything is very slow and causes programs to "not respond" for a few minutes. (this stops happening when the scan is not running so it's not an error that's present unless Malwarebytes is scanning.)

Like I said, I'm rather frustrated by this because while Malwarebytes is not working properly my computer and my job is put at risk and it affects my ability to work.

[exile360]

OK, at this point it would be best to back up any important data if you haven't already, especially since this is a work critical system.  If that drive fails any important work documents may be unrecoverable so avoiding that is more important than anything else.

I'm not sure what tool your are referring to, but if it is FRST, it should not have been detected as a threat by Windows Defender (I just tested on my own system to verify and I was able to run it without it being blocked as any sort of threat or Trojan).

With all of that said, a new version of Malwarebytes has been released and I would recommend trying another clean install to see if it corrects the issues and hopefully it will, but the first thing you need to do is back up any important files before doing anything else in case these issues are being caused by a failing drive.

Once your data has been backed up, proceed with the following:

1. Download and run the Malwarebytes Support Tool
2. Accept the EULA and click Advanced tab on the left (not Start Repair)
3. Click the Clean button, and allow it to restart your system and then reinstall Malwarebytes, either by allowing the tool to do so when it offers to on restart, or by downloading and installing the latest version from here