It now takes ClamWin a long time to load the virus signatures each time a user initiates a scan--either a manual scan or a scheduled scan. I think Clam AV badly needs to compact the signature database.

Due to this slowness, I have set Clam Sentinel to only use ClamWin signatures in its real-time scans and not perform a preliminary heuristic scan (disable the Monitor System For New Malware setting to do this). Neither the Sentinel heuristics nor the Sentinel program itself have been updated since 2014, are thus out-of-date and generally will not detect any malware via heuristics. I only use ClamWin for scheduled scans when speed is not very important, and Sentinel uses the ClamWin signatures to scan in real-time as files are added or changed on my computer. Sentinel thus becomes a true front-end for ClamWin. I wish the ClamWin developers would incorporate this within the ClamWin program. Andrea Russo always said that he has given them a good "roadmap" for real-time scanning.

Just be sure to use the Clam AV signatures only--do not use any third party signatures, including Yara signatures, which will "break" Sentinel. To further speed things up, you should also probably set Sentinel to only scan at most about 40 or 50 extensions (via Advanced Settings, Extensions Scanned).
Regards,

UPDATE
This is not a viable option, however, because the Clam Sentinel scan using ClamWin only is just too slow--it seems that Sentinel just uses the normal ClamWin scan, which has to load the database for each item scanned. The Sentinel heuristic scan is very fast because it does not use any signatures except for its own internal heuristics. You can disable the ClamWin scan by inserting this in the Sentinel .ini file (in the scan settings): NS=2. The problem is that the heuristics are out-of-date since 2014. I recommend uninstalling Sentinel. If ClamWin doesn't soon get updated AND Clam AV doesn't do something about the slow signatures loading, uninstalling ClamWin would probably be the best thing to do also.

Regards,

Hello!
I'm Raúl.
I think that Clamwin will be fuse ClamWin with ClamSentinel and to get better ClamSentinel. ClamSentinel is free software.
And it support many languages that's it will help to many users that's didn't understand English language but it understand his local language.

ClamSentinel is available on many locale languages and I like it that.

Many thanks!

From 2012 until 2014 I helped Andrea develop the heuristic detections used by Clam Sentinel, but neither of us have supported Clam Sentinel since 2014. That was 5 years ago, and Sentinel heuristics can not detect malware today in 2019. It will not be integrated with ClamWin. With each new version of Clam AV, the Clam AV developers have new technology/detections that are not supported by ClamWin. The ClamWin developers may not be able to support ClamWin much longer.

My suggestion to use Clam Sentinel as a "front end" for ClamWin is the best that can be done for ClamWin at the present time.

Regards,

Thanks!
I like ClamWin.

Will clamwin die?
Or they'll do new security software?

When the developers drop ClamWin, there will not be anything to take its place. There is no development of ClamWin--they just port the Clam AV Linux code over to Windows, and they can not support all of the enhancements that Clam AV has or will have. They are several versions behind Clam AV now. The fight against malware now takes full-time commitment and talent, and that is why there will probably be a replacement for ClamWin. They should have asked for user contributions long ago when ClamWin had about 500,000 users so they could create a fund to hire professional development programmers.

I am not very optimistic about ClamWin. I continue to use it, but I rely upon a real-time antivirus for primary protection. I switch between Windows Defender and Forticlient, with extra scans from Emsisoft's free scanner and Kaspersky's free TDSSKiller.

Regards,

Many thanks for your help!

Thank you for using ClamWin since 2011!

Regards,