OMG I found the fastest way to do a virus scare reduce time by 30-40%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[ADE]

If you do a scan and then go into windows task manager under applications right click on the scan application and go to processes. It will be highlighted. Right click on that one, go under priority and set it to a higher level to reduce time!!! Oh, just don't do anything else when this is done or you may freeze the application. Not your computer, just the application. To undo that just set priority back to normal. It may not work with Norton Anti-Virus.

 

[Geoff]

By doing that you can cause system instability among other apps and Windows processes. At least if it's on normal you can surf the web at the same time, but when you set it to high you cant do anything else.

 

[ADE]

I know. It can be risky, but like i said, you shouldn't do anything while doing this.

 

[Motoxrdude]

LMAO....

I highly would not recommend doing this. Its a bad thing when a running app has a higher processor priority then windows apps

 

[ADE]

worked for me....

 

[magicman]

I'm so glad you've just discovered how to alter process priorities, but I agree you shouldn't be recommending this course of action to people - it's irrisponsible. If you were looking to reduce non-essential load on the cpu during a scan, you should be looking to reduce the priority of other running programs you won't be using, rather than pushing essential Windows processes to the back of the queue.

 

[ADE]

OK, I don't recommend. Like I said, I found a way, not saying you should do this. That OK to say?

 

[Robertw18]

lol... I'm sorry everyone's taken the air out of your sails... you were so excited, it sounded like you discovered an easter egg! I agree with everyone else. This function was more or less intended to be used for LOWERING processs... For example if you were encoding a large movie file, and saw that it was going to take you a week to do it... and you thought.... eh what the heck, I have a month to get this done it.... I wanna go play WOW.... you could lower the encoding process to give your game a higher priority. This would keep your encoding going in the background, but would also allow you to use your computer for other things....

As always, use extreme caution when playing around with windows processes... one false move could give you a 20 - 30 pound paperweight.

 

[gurra92]

I found out about priorities a long time ago, i tried it on Nero while a was burning a disc. I chosed top priority and the computer totaly broke down. Now we're talking system instability...

 

[tlarkin]

in all fairness though, you can kill a ton of windows processes that aren't needed to run during a virus scan and allocate those said resources to the scan app itself, you will probably have to reboot whent he scan is done, but its not like its going to cause your system to ultimately crash every time.

Just make sure you not killing a core process that is needed to run windows, things like networking services, and application services can generally be killed when doing something like that. Its similar to an old trick I used to use when defragging hard drives, with the exception of, I would defrag from dos or from safe mode and it ran way faster than in windows.

 

[pdc76]

everything used to run faster than when ran in windows, lol.

 

[Verve]

so bad stuff happens when you raise a program's priority or just when you lower a system one, or both?

 

[ADE]

OK OK. I just never had a problem with it. As long as I monitored the CPU usage and it never got to 100% or over than everything worked fine. I do it with Defragmenting, Spy-ware scans, Virus scans and that's about it. Works wonders for me. Its not like I always put it at "real time" at all. Hi on the max. When its the middle of the day and I need to do a scan but want it over with I just do this.

 

[pdc76]

i usually just run that stuff during my sleeping hours. i figure let it take it's time so it's done right. if you're in a hurry to do something else, don't scan for viruses.