I have been using MicroGDS Professional v5.1 on my PC along with Win XP sp2 & 3 for at least 10 years and I have had Avast Free on my PC for about 5 of those years. I never had any problems until this morning when I tried to load MicroGDS Pro. The following message appears on the screen.
“Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item.”
After disabling Avast I found I could load MicroGPS and it works perfectly, so I have added MicroGPS to Avast’s exclusions. Why has this suddenly occurred, and how do I stop Avast blocking it so I can remove it from the exclusions.
I would not add it to the exclusions, and instead remove it now from the exclusion list. I would run an Avast scan after first updating the definitions to see if you are clean. If you haven’t already run Malwarebytes (MBAM) found on the 2nd post of the Virus section here in the forum, please download and run it. MBAM runs differently than an antivirus (AV).
Did you make any changes to your machine prior to getting this problem?
Are all your machines up to date with its software? I noticed one of your machines is an XP SP2? It’s a little late now to update that and now is very exposed to malware. Do you have 2-way firewalls for these machines and any other security software? Is your firewall blocking MicroGDS Professional v5.1?
Did you run a Registry cleaner recently and delete anything?
If after updating the Avast definitions, running a scan and coming out clean, running MBAM and coming out clean, finding out that your firewall is not blocking this site, and your other software is up to date, then I would try an Avast Boot time scan. Let us know in your next post your results. Thank you.