Avast asks to submit file for second time

I have Avast 5, newest updates all applied, on my Toshiba laptop running Vista Home Premium.

A few minutes ago, for the second time since I reinstalled this version of Windows a box has come up regarding a suspcious file, with some mention of the word heuristic. I remember the file started rmm or rimm.

What happens about this? If it’s found to be a virus, am I messaged in some way? I would have liked to see some kind of log in Avast somewhere so that I could confirm the name of the file when I wrote this post.

Both times this has happened I’ve said yes to have the file sent. I haven’t deleted anything.

I looked at a file in the drivers folder where I remember the file is and there are two of the similar name in there, one being I think a driver for an SD card.

A false positive?

All non-guessed thoughts and authoritative remarks if possible are welcome.

Thanks.

Check the Chest (quarantine) to see if you’ve sent files to there.
Scan your computer again (full) and check if anything is wrong.

I’m running a scan right now, a full scan. There’s nothing in the chest though.

Can viruses be smuggled into avi films? I’m thinking not, they wouldn’t run if they were corrupted like that would they? Not something I’ve done much of though.

What’s heuristic meaning in this context, and what is happening when Avast detects something suspicious this way?

Thanks.

Heuristic in this context means generic detection based on generic virus signatures.
Could be false positives indeed. But the full scanning - or the boot time scanning - will tell us more.

The scan found zero infected files, but when I looked at the report - unfortunately there is no mention of it now so I’m probably not calling it by its correct name - it showed five or six files that couldn’t be scanned, and all are in the Alwil path, files ending .dll. No ‘actions’ options were available at this point. I had a similar… well, what I thought was a fault… occur on both my and my dad’s laptops when we had Avast 4 - we ended up using Avira for a while, and at one point I wiped our hard drives and reinstalled, a habit I want to not get into.

I’m going to choose the boot time scan now and reboot. I’ve got Super Anti Spyware here too, I’ll give that a go.

Thanks so far.

Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.

The boot-time scan found no virus, and there’s nothing in the log similar to that non-scanning of Alwil path files from before. A specific right-click scan of the file that was submitted as mentioned before found no virus.

Super Anti-Spyware found the usual tracking cookies, 11, now deleted.

Do things sound fine? What happens about the submitted file?

I don’t fully understand about virus signatures, generic or otherwise - I’m basically a layman. Can a normal innocent file have a virus signature, if that makes sense?

Thanks. I’ll look in here again tomorrow.

Yes.

Check avast logs. C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast5\Setup\setup.log or C:\Users\All Users\Alwil Software\Avast5\log\Setup.log have it logged.