Windows Defender Very slow ?

[Saint]

I have Windows 8.1 and Windows Defender, Windows Defender usually takes 1 to 1 1/2 hours to do a complete scan of my computer, Now for some reason it is running a scan very slowly and it looks like it's going to take a day to do the same scan of my computer. I have made sure I have no viruses on the computer, what could cause Windows Defender to slow done like this and is there a way to fix Windows Defender. In 1 hour it has only scanned 32,000 files and it has to go through around 700,000 files to finish the scan.
Steve

 

[joeuser]

I have Windows 8.1 and Windows Defender, Windows Defender usually takes 1 to 1 1/2 hours to do a complete scan of my computer, Now for some reason it is running a scan very slowly and it looks like it's going to take a day to do the same scan of my computer. I have made sure I have no viruses on the computer, what could cause Windows Defender to slow done like this and is there a way to fix Windows Defender. In 1 hour it has only scanned 32,000 files and it has to go through around 700,000 files to finish the scan.
Steve

If you have no viruses than why scan?

Is it possible you had done a ' quick scan ' previously & now its doing a ' full scan ' ?

 

[iMONITOR]

Delete ALL your Temporary Internet Files, if you haven't already done so. Defragment your hard drive.

 

[KB0VWG]

There could be a program running in the background that could make it run slow. Try to start and run it in safe mode and see what it does.
kb0vwg
wqoi992

 

[Saint]

Safe Mode

There could be a program running in the background that could make it run slow. Try to start and run it in safe mode and see what it does.
kb0vwg
wqoi992

I let Windows 8.1 run in Safe Mode last night and it finished the complete scan when I was sleeping, I think it's OK now.
Steve

 

[CapStar362]

why defrag a drive without knowing if his drive is above the nominal margin of fragmentation to which it starts grossly affecting performance?

you cannot completely defrag a OS home drive, the moment you start doing things right after the defrag, you start fragmenting it again already.

KB0 has a better notion here, another program may be doing excessive read/write ops which would heavily bog down a scan.

 

[joeuser]

People defrag to much - I do my systems once a year, sometimes longer...

 

[bravo14]

Defragment your hard drive.

I remember years ago my brother had problems his computer was so slow. I ask him if he Defrag his hard drive he said never did. Boy it took 4 days to do defrag cause it was a solid red. After he defrag the hard drive it ran smoother.

 

[moonbounce]

Get Bit Defender for free, lot better than WD.

 

[NHdave]

People defrag to much - I do my systems once a year, sometimes longer...

There's no point in doing it manually at all, Windows does it on it's own in the background.

 

[robbie2745]

I agree with what NHDave said about defrag. I have Windows 8.1 and when you are not using it but still powered on it will automatically defrag in the background.

 

[CapStar362]

only if using a SSD.... that is TRIM and BGC ( Background Garbage Collection ) firmware Features. HDD's do not have this.

windows only interfaces the TRIM and BGC feature sets and helps ID those files.


your drives WILL fragment over time, i promise you. SSD's with TRIM and BGC have a exponentially smaller fragment threshold.

but if you run 8.1 off a HDD, let it run for a good 4 months without doing any Cache cleaning or optimization from 3rd party software and come back with the results.


ill be waiting.....