Intego on 12 yo iMac

[rainbowcat]

Hope I'm in the right place for posting this.

I have a workhorse 2010 iMac, running El Cap 10.11.6. I deleted Avast, and installed Intego's free app from App Store. First scan ran for 36 hours before I stopped it. No problems found, but 75 files Intego said it couldn't scan. Spouse uses this computer for YouTube, surfing, Gmail, and not much else. I use it for storage, and yes I have an external back up; Time Machine runs auto backups. Of course it runs slower than molasses in the winter. At some point I'll take it to Apple Store and hope they can speed it up a bit.

My question -the scan ran for 36 hours straight before I finally stopped it - is this normal? Scans on my MBA take minutes.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I have a workhorse 2010 iMac,... Of course it runs slower than molasses in the winter. At some point I'll take it to Apple Store and hope they can speed it up a bit.

Usually you can easily speed up an old Mac with a bit of routine maintenance:

Macintosh Routine Maintenance

And if that doesn't do it, this page should help:

Macintosh Slowdown Solutions

My question -the scan ran for 36 hours straight before I finally stopped it - is this normal? Scans on my MBA take minutes.

What isn't normal is for a VirusBarrier scan to take only a few minutes. Unless you only scanned a small folder and nothing else.

It isn't unusual for a VB scan to take several hours. Once you do a full disk scan, after that you can set VB just to scan new files as they come in in your Downloads folder, which will save a lot of time.

Sometimes scans can get quite long if VB gets stuck on encrypted files, or files that the system protects. VB will try to scan them until it times out, making your scan quite long.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

You say you deleted Avast. Did you did a full and proper uninstall, or did you simply trash the app? If the latter, you have a lot more work to do. Here's Avast's own instructions on how to uninstall their software, but you may need to use an app like Find Any File or EasyFind to hunt down remnants that even their uninstaller may leave behind.

Uninstalling Avast Security from Mac | Official Avast Support

Instructions for removing Avast Security from Mac.

support.avast.com

If that iMac still has the original HDD, there's a fair chance that it's dying. Randy's page on slowdown solutions is fairly comprehensive and one item that I would jump straight to is do a SMART check on your drive to see what the self reporting diagnostics have to say. DriveDx is one great one that he lists, which I use also.

 

[rainbowcat]

Usually you can easily speed up an old Mac with a bit of routine maintenance:

Macintosh Routine Maintenance

And if that doesn't do it, this page should help:

Macintosh Slowdown Solutions

What isn't normal is for a VirusBarrier scan to take only a few minutes. Unless you only scanned a small folder and nothing else.

It isn't unusual for a VB scan to take several hours. Once you do a full disk scan, after that you can set VB just to scan new files as they come in in your Downloads folder, which will save a lot of time.

Sometimes scans can get quite long if VB gets stuck on encrypted files, or files that the system protects. VB will try to scan them until it times out, making your scan quite long.

The first scan on my MBA did take quite a while, now it's pretty fast.
Will definitely check out those links to speed up the iMac - thanks much!

 

[rainbowcat]

You say you deleted Avast. Did you did a full and proper uninstall, or did you simply trash the app? If the latter, you have a lot more work to do. Here's Avast's own instructions on how to uninstall their software, but you may need to use an app like Find Any File or EasyFind to hunt down remnants that even their uninstaller may leave behind.

Uninstalling Avast Security from Mac | Official Avast Support

Instructions for removing Avast Security from Mac.

support.avast.com

If that iMac still has the original HDD, there's a fair chance that it's dying. Randy's page on slowdown solutions is fairly comprehensive and one item that I would jump straight to is do a SMART check on your drive to see what the self reporting diagnostics have to say. DriveDx is one great one that he lists, which I use also.

Did a proper uninstall using Avast uninstaller. Everything on the iMac is the original, and I'm amazed it still runs at all! Going to check out those links to speed things up a bit. Thank you for your help.

(Life IS a beach - I'm a total beach bum!)