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Initial Scan Never Completes

  • 1 March 2023
  • 7 replies
  • 258 views

Userlevel 2

Installed Webroot Secure Anywhere on my MacBook Pro M1 running Ventura, and the initial scan has run for hours and never completes. It appears that it is scanning every file in my OneDrive, most of which are cloud-based.

This makes Webroot useless for me, and I’m going to have to remove it and go with another alternative.

Truly sad, as Webroot used to be a decent product.

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Best answer by ChadL 2 March 2023, 19:00

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Userlevel 7
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Hello @DMCATL 

 

Let me ping @ChadL to see what he can come up with.

 

Thanks,

Userlevel 5

Hey @DMCATL

I’m sorry to hear you’re experiencing this. I want to do a little digging because there might be issues relating to the Ventura OS that’s causing this. For one part: with your OneDrive are you using the latest update? What is the size of the OneDrive that its  trying to scan, if you don’t mind sharing? 

I’ve seen some talks about how OneDrive and now DropBox both require files to be duplicated and present on the local system, this is actually a requirement that comes from Apple and is a result of changes in the Ventura OS. I’m trying to discover if the issue is truly that the files just are not present, or if the issue is that the size of the files are just so large that they take a long time to scan. For instance if you have many archives or archived files, it can take a significantly longer time to complete a scan. 

 

Looking forward to hearing from you,

 

Chad 

Userlevel 2

The size of the OneDrive is approximately 140GB.

My initial concern was that Webroot was triggering a download of the cloud-stored files to my local drive, but that was not the case. Both OneDrive and Ventura are completely up to date.

In viewing the scan progress, I could see that Webroot was scanning all the files in OneDrive, many of which have not been used in quite some time and are only stored in the cloud. Since this was the initial scan, there was nothing I could do to get Webroot to bypass scanning those files. After several hours, I searched the community and saw some older references indicating Webroot scans on Macs taking as long as 2-3 days or more. After finding those, I ended up shutting Webroot down and removing it from my system, as I couldn’t wait on it to complete.

In all honesty, I don’t recall any scan of any type taking that long in recent memory on Windows or Mac. And I know from experience that Webroot scans on Windows only take a couple of minutes at most. While i realize that Webroot is different for Mac, this type of situation is unworkable, at least for me.

However, if you come up with anything, I’ll be happy to give it another try.

Userlevel 5

So, it looks like a reason why this is happening is likely related to this update regarding OneDrive: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-onedrive-blog/inside-the-new-files-on-demand-experience-on-macos/ba-p/3058922 

Its likely that the API for Apple’s File Provider that both DropBox and OneDrive (as well as other similar companies have to use now on Ventura) cause an issue where the file is required to be on demand and when we scan the file it might very well be downloading them on the Apple OS side. The Windows version doesn’t see this issue because Microsoft’s method of integrating with Cloud based File Services is completely different. You are actually the first person we’ve seen have this issue (that I’m aware of), but I’ve documented the issue and we will work on it as well as any workarounds. We have some changes coming in the next few releases that will allow for a more complex set of allowing files and folders to be bypassed, and ideally we can now also detect if these files are cloud based or not based on the new API. Additionally, these changes will significantly decrease the time of a first time scan and ensure your protection is available much faster than before. 

I’m sorry that you’ve been affected by this change, and I will make a note to tag you here when there are more updates. 

 

All the best,

 

Chad

Userlevel 2

Thanks for looking into this and getting back to me so quickly. While this doesn’t solve my problem, it’s good to know that it’s been recognized and will presumably be worked on in the near future.

Userlevel 5

@DMCATL I wanted to give you an update that this work has been scheduled and will be included in an upcoming release. I can’t give an exact timeline as priorities shift but I wanted to update you that the work is on our list to do.

Any updates on this? My initial scan has been running for several hours and currently goes through the 2TB on my dropbox (which will probably take a week or longer)...

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