I’m -really- sorry if this is the wrong place to be posting this, but I assumed it was. Anyway, Avast appears to be having difficulties scanning what seems to be important system files. For the record, I have vista. No, Windows 7 is not an option for me. I’m attaching a screenshot of the page telling me Avast is unable to scan certain files. Please look at it and tell me what you guys think, and how I can fix this?
First it is strange that these aren’t actually files but folders and they aren’t important system files (nor system folders). I don’t use Vista so can’t be any practical help, I believe there is also something special/different about the My****** (pictures, music, etc.) folder locations, though I can’t see how it can record the folder paths, yet not be able to find them…
Files that can’t be scanned aren’t an indication that they are infected or somehow suspicious.
The user folder is like the documents & settings\username folder on XP.
Avast should be able to scan them without a problem.
To me it sounds like a permission problem.
Did you install avast as administrator with full rights?
These are the equivalent of symbolic links in Unix. They aren’t folders or files. They are there for reverse compatibility to Windows XP aware applications and contain pointers to the actual folders.
For example:
c:\documents and Settings\ is simply a pointer to c:\users\
Vista\7 use circular links to %Program Files% and %Users% folders.
Avast is just reporting it. You can uncheck the options for reporting soft and hard errors on the avast settings.
It was a problem, already solved (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=27330.msg223192#msg223192). Now, the only thing that rests is the reporting.
The problem here may be that the links point to a wrong target (e.g. the C:\documents and settings doesn’t point do c:\users, but rather to d:\users… or maybe x:\users, don’t know).
I’ve seen it quite a few times already. I’m not sure how it can happen (unless it’s a multiboot system with different partition letters in each OS) - possibly a strange way of installing the OS. In any case, there isn’t much we could do about it - the problem is in the links themselves.