Does the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool re-start where it left off?

Does the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool re-start where it left
off when you're forced to reboot Windows 10 daily?
https://s18.postimg.org/k5heo208p/msrt.jpg

The non-hide-able MSRT has been running in the foreground for 40 hours and
it's not even a quarter of the way done, so I have been avoiding rebooting
Windows 10, but Windows needs to be rebooted daily due to inherent Windows
setup issues such as I'm trying to solve vpn and ftp problems that crop up
that Windows XP never had.

So It's really frustrating to waste the past two days if the MSRT starts at
the beginning when I am forced to reboot Windows 10 daily just to get
Windows 10 to work properly.

I'm so frustrated that I just want to ask one quick question here, which is
whether the MSRT will re-start where it left off, or, if I just wasted two
days trying not to reboot Windows 10?

On Thu, 1 Jun 2017 01:07:57 +0000 (UTC), Roy Tremblay
wrote:

Does the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool re-start where it left
off when you're forced to reboot Windows 10 daily?
https://s18.postimg.org/k5heo208p/msrt.jpg

The non-hide-able MSRT has been running in the foreground for 40 hours and
it's not even a quarter of the way done, so I have been avoiding rebooting
Windows 10, but Windows needs to be rebooted daily due to inherent Windows
setup issues such as I'm trying to solve vpn and ftp problems that crop up
that Windows XP never had.

So It's really frustrating to waste the past two days if the MSRT starts at
the beginning when I am forced to reboot Windows 10 daily just to get
Windows 10 to work properly.

I'm so frustrated that I just want to ask one quick question here, which is
whether the MSRT will re-start where it left off, or, if I just wasted two
days trying not to reboot Windows 10?

I let the MSRT run on "full" scan overnight. It finds viruses
occasionally.

Peter Jason actually wrote:

I let the MSRT run on "full" scan overnight. It finds viruses
occasionally.

Overnight won't cut it as it has taken 40 hours and it isn't even a quarter
of the way there.

It's gonna take a week or more.

So I rebooted.
When I started the MSRT, I could see that I wasted the 40 hours.
The MSRT started from the beginning.

What a waste of time that MSRT tool is.

Why the MSRT full scan can't just be run in the background and why it can't
pick up where it left off is lost on me, but nonetheless, I ended up having
to reboot Windows 10 because I needed to enable a registry hack for
anonymous ftp to work.

Since Windows needs daily reboots just to get it set up to work, I will
probably wait a few weeks or months before running the week-long MSRT since
it starts from scratch every time.

Roy Tremblay wrote:
Does the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool re-start where it left
off when you're forced to reboot Windows 10 daily?
https://s18.postimg.org/k5heo208p/msrt.jpg

The non-hide-able MSRT has been running in the foreground for 40 hours and
it's not even a quarter of the way done, so I have been avoiding rebooting
Windows 10, but Windows needs to be rebooted daily due to inherent Windows
setup issues such as I'm trying to solve vpn and ftp problems that crop up
that Windows XP never had.

So It's really frustrating to waste the past two days if the MSRT starts at
the beginning when I am forced to reboot Windows 10 daily just to get
Windows 10 to work properly.

I'm so frustrated that I just want to ask one quick question here, which is
whether the MSRT will re-start where it left off, or, if I just wasted two
days trying not to reboot Windows 10?

Use Process Monitor, stop the trace in the File menu,
scroll down and look for ReadFile operations on C: .
You could search on mrt.exe or whatever it is called,
to narrow the field.

(Process Monitor - Version for Vista or later)

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/...processmonitor

What it is probably doing, is scanning the same file
over and over again.

In my case, I had (some) AV product, I started a scan,
and it got "stuck" on a 2KB .ico file. Deleting the file,
repeated the scan, and all went well afterwards. I don't know
if MSRT has this weakness or not. Another possibility, is
MSRT doesn't deal with Junction Points all that well.

Some AV products, cannot even handle a decent range of
archival formats (ZIP, 7z, rar). But what should
happen in that case, is they just skip over material they
cannot read. And if you're lucky, they log it.

In addition, some AV products cannot handle tarballs, like the
source for Firefox. The source for Firefox is "too big" and
causes indigestion. The AV can actually crash while unpacking the
135,000+ files in one of those. I have to put such tarballs
on a partition that doesn't get scanned.

*******

There's no reason for it to keep a "progress". Only some
older AV products that stored checksums in Alternate Streams
could do that. Generally, it's considered that if you
have to restart a scan, malware could have entered files
already scanned, deceiving the user into thinking "all is well".
It really pays for the tool to start the scan all over again.

If the AV product is an "offline" scanner, then yes, you
can restart those, and they do maintain a progress record.
They can do that, because since the OS isn't running, there's
no chance for (Windows) malware to strike. Such products
might typically use a Linux OS while signature scanning offline.

*******

If you need to trace the .exe on WinXP, you'll need an older version
of Process Monitor.

Replace the "20150502064835" field with "*" if you want to
see all the versions available and walk backwards in time.
The version above is version 3.2, while this particular
one is version 3.1.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150502...rnals/bb896645

Paul

In article , says...
The non-hide-able MSRT has been running in the foreground for 40 hours and
it's not even a quarter of the way done,

From your screenshots it appears that you chose to run a "Full scan"
Why?
How long it takes depends on how many files you ask it to scan, how much
stuff is on your HDD?

If you have a decent AV program already installed and running, then let
it do its job, the MSRT is to be used in addition to your regular aV
protection.

I just downloaded the latest MSRT and ran a "Quick Scan". it took less
than 4 minutes to complete on this laptop which shows 63.9 GB of space
used on the C drive..

UnsteadyKen actually wrote:

I just downloaded the latest MSRT and ran a "Quick Scan". it took less
than 4 minutes to complete on this laptop which shows 63.9 GB of space
used on the C drive..

You are correct.

While the MSRT full scan takes (literally) about a week to complete, the
quick scan seems to only look in the C:\users, C:\Windows, C:\program files
and D:\programs directories, and as such, takes only about five minutes to
complete.

Since the time is astronomically different, does anyone ever recommend the
full scan?