Here are a couple Symantec Mail Security for Exchange tips concerning scanning.  [more]

  • Be careful when selecting the “…force rescan before allowing access to information store” option. This forces a rescan of the entire information store every time virus definitions are updated. Depending on how big the information store is, this could take days to complete. And since Symantec usually releases updates at noon, this kicks off on the Exchange server right in the middle of the day.

  • If you are going to schedule scans of the information store, but sure to monitor the start and completion times so you can make sure you are not causing performance issues. The logs will report the start of the scan and the end with the following logs.

 

Notice here it took over a week for the scan to finish. This is an extreme case with a large information store, but even a medium size store could take a couple days to finish.