Hello Nick,
So does the same thing happen when you reboot into Safe Mode to then run a
Full scan ?
How to start Windows in Safe Mode
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial61.html
Have you run a check disk (CHKDSK /F /R) on your hard drive recently. Run a
defrag etc.
FYI
The quick scan is very useful. It looks at all of the actively running
processes on the machine, as well as files that are pointed to by the
various registry entries and other locations used by spyware to start
automatically or otherwise interfere with your system.
If you have a particular piece of spyware or other unwanted software that is
detected by Windows Defender, the vast majority of the time it should be
detected by the quick scan.
The full scan, in addition to performing all of the checks in a quick scan,
also examines every single file on your system. This is a quite
time-consuming operation if you have a lot of files.
I would always start with a quick scan - if it gives you a clean bill of
health, you can be pretty confident in the results. If the quick scan finds
anything, you probably should follow it up with a full scan to find any
additional junk that the malicious software dropped on your machine that may
have been missed by the quick scan. It's also a good idea to schedule the
full scan to happen periodically (every night, for instance) at a time when
you are not typically using your computer and the added time to scan all of
the files won't be noticed.
I hope this post is helpful, but we would highly appreciate it if you could
rate the pºst, so we can keep the community informed and saves somebody
else the hours of trawling through the web trying to find a solution.
- -- ---
"Nick" wrote:
> I have a relatively new laptop with Vista on it. Twice I've tried to run the
> full scan on Windows Defender and both times it gets stuck after about 20
> mins. I did not keep any info on the first time but on the second time, it
> got stuck after 21 mins for about 30 mins. It has scanned 1229727 objects
> and the object it was stuck on was
> C:\SwSetup\WLASST\Disk1\WAAISetup.log->(UTF-16LE). I could not stop the scan
> so I had to exit using task manager. The Definition version is 1.20.2825.10.
>
> I have quick scan scheduled every day and it appears to be working.
>
> Any help would be welcomed.