Myth or fact? Running two scans at the same time will skew the results.

NekoJonez

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Jun 3, 2015
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So, image you are doing some testing for a new version of an AV product... And you do a 2nd opinion scan...

Is it better to first let one program finish scanning before you let another program loose? Let's calculate out the possible duplicate results, will the engines get in each others way?

Will one program actually find less malware if another program is scanning as well...?

I heard it wasn't a good idea to run two AV's at the same time, but what happens if you let two scan at the same time?
 
L

LabZero

Well, certainly a very high consumption of resources that could be crashed the PC (but depends on programs that are simultaneously scanning).
Each program has its own scanning algorithm and works independently from the other in the sense that malware detection routines are different and should not interfere with each other.
That said though it is not recommended to do two scans simultaneously because this does not increase the security of your PC and despite what I said above there is always the risk of errors occurring.
 

NekoJonez

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Jun 3, 2015
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That makes quite a bit of sense. I think that's the best explanation you can give... If nobody has an objection.
 
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Atlas147

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Jul 28, 2014
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The scans itself shouldn't be affected when running together, the problem would probably occur when you try to remove threats and when 1 scan removes it and the other tries to remove it again it would give errors like file not found or could not be removed. The best is to run scans 1 by 1 and let the scan finish, quarantine the threats and then proceed to start another scan.
 

Piteko21

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The scans itself shouldn't be affected when running together, the problem would probably occur when you try to remove threats and when 1 scan removes it and the other tries to remove it again it would give errors like file not found or could not be removed. The best is to run scans 1 by 1 and let the scan finish, quarantine the threats and then proceed to start another scan.
i think the same
 

OokamiCreed

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May 8, 2015
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I myself have run 5 scans at once with different AV/AW. It does nothing negative except high CPU and disk usage. I have done this about 100 times so I can say this with certainty. Now you would want to have the repair/delete/quarantine, etc process by each done one by one. Don't do them all at once just in case one or more detect the same thing. Then they would conflict.
 

aztony

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Oct 15, 2013
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For the same reason it is discouraged having (2) or more active resident AVs on the same system, the potential of conflict, I would not run a 2nd opinion scanner while the resident/primary AV is scanning. I would run 'em separately to avoid the possibility of conflict.
 

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