I just renewed my Avast Internet Security subscription a pair of days ago.
Today I was working on a new image in Photoshop, in fact I had been about 2 hours working on the image when it was time to save it. But I got a very bad surprise, I couldn’t save the file. There was a Photoshop error message: “Could not save as C:..” because the file is locked. Use the ‘Properties’ command in the Windows Explorer to unlock the file."
I searched the Internet for suggestions, but as I hadn’t saved the file yet there was no folder to un-protect. Neither had I made any mistake in my editing. In the end I had to give up, close the file and restart my computer. But that didn’t help either. Breaking my head hard for hours, but HEY there comes a POP-UP from Avast, long time past ruining my work.
The STUPID thing, without asking me, with no warning at all, had decided to block Photoshop using the Ransomware Shield. I can understand there are false positives, but WTH isn’t it configured to warn you when it decides to block something.
Was Avast going to demand a ransom in exchange for unblocking my Photoshop? Or is it a bug?
One thing for sure, it was a B deception.
How should we configure this ransomware shield so it really works properly? How can one protect folders and still open files and save files? Or do we have to be enabling and disabling it every time we want to open or save a file?
Shouldn’t the shield stop things coming in instead of attacking things one has had on one’s computer for years.
How can one know for sure that was a false positive or not?
Sorry about this rant, but I’ve been without work for months and throwing my efforts down the drain doesn’t make me at all happy.
At least, I hope this saves the work of someone else, checking Avast before taking any other actions.
