Loading...

Knowledge Center

VirusScan Enterprise exclusions and hardware paths (physical address versus logical address)
Technical Articles ID:   KB61000
Last Modified:  5/12/2016
Rated:

Environment

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise 8.x

Problem

Under certain circumstances, VirusScan Enterprise (VSE) reports the path of a scan item by its physical address rather than its logical address.

Example: \Device\HardDiskVolume1\Windows\File1.txt rather than C:\Windows\File1.txt


An exclusion using the logical address may not be effective if Windows references an object using its physical address.

If you set an exclusion for File1.txt to avoid a performance issue resulting in timeouts (reported in the On-Access Scan log), you would generally exclude C:\Windows\File1.txt. However, you may subsequently find the exclusion is not effective and timeouts still occur. Viewing the On-Access Scan shows timeouts occurring on physical address: \Device\HardDiskVolume1\Windows\File1.txt.

Cause

This can be caused by factors such as:
  • Disk emulation drivers attaching to Storage Area Networks or Network Area Storage
  • Advanced disk controller cards
  • RAID array disk controllers
  • Windows Volume Mount Points

Solution

VSE scans an object if it is presented as a physical or logical address; therefore, when using exclusions, ensure that you check the On-Access Logs to see if exclusions are effective.

Using the previous example, you set the exclusion for the file C:\Windows\File1.txt as \Device\HardDiskVolume1\Windows\File1.txt to match the entry in the On-Access Scan log.

Related Information

If you suspect you may encounter physical addresses and want to discover physical to logical mappings in your Windows system, use the WinObj tool provided by SysInternals.

See: http://technet.microsoft.com/sysinternals/bb896657.aspx
  1. Launch WinObj.
  2. In the left panel, navigate to the GLOBAL?? entry.
  3. In the right panel, locate your logical disk letters, showing the physical to logical mapping.

Rate this document

Beta Translate with

Select a desired language below to translate this page.

Glossary of Technical Terms


 Highlight Glossary Terms

Please take a moment to browse our Glossary of Technical Terms.