I didn’t see this anywhere else so I hope I am not posting a repeat question. Anyway, I have Avast running on my SanDisk so that when I insert the drive Avast loads and initially scans the host computer as well as protects the thumb drive. Well, I wanted to use the thumb drive to check multiple computers in my office as a sort of secondary protection / check against infection. Here’s the question: When I inserted in to a computer the initial scan detected something on the host, and recommended that I eject the drive because it could become infected itself or I could ignore which was of course not recommended, what are the changes that I would become infected if I ignored? I really cannot remove the virus if I cannot get software to run on the host computer that can remove it so if I ignore and do a full scan of the host computer with Avast on my SanDisk how likely is it that I will also infect the SanDisk?
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Firstly I don’t use the avast for U3 version so have no personal experience of it. I would say that the message is one I would expect of a portable version of avast designed to protect your portable drive to advise removing the drive as the host is infected.
So your use to use it to scan the host sort of goes against what it was designed for to protect the portable drive and not to detect and disinfect host computers.
You don’t say what was detected (malware name, file name, location, etc. ?) so I doubt anyone could say with any certainty if your USB may become infected, obviously the longer it is connected to the host the greater that chance might be.
I suspect that the scan that avast does when you connect is to dissimilar to the one done by the desktop version of avast, in that it scans startup entries and applications loaded into memory, it could well be one of those that it is detecting.
What other protection is on the host computer/s ?
You should perhaps pause it before running a scan with avast.