Yes, same here.
I just looked at my scan history again and the Pac-Man ghosts are gone from all but one targeted scan. Interestingly in the previous screen shot I posted, I noticed full weekly scans 7/12 and 7/19 aren’t even listed but today when I look at scan history they are listed.
Ghost & red exlamation mark, malady.
What is associated to this issue is Malwarebytes service, wanting an update & reboot that causes problems. Malwarebytes Clean uninstall tool, can take care of it. BUT the problem persists with this Ghost.
I had to completely format my hard drive and re install windows 10. No other cure, and it took care of it. Hot keys, Windows key - Shift - s, and you can screen shot it, like this one to see if it is the same thing.
The whole scientific community uses your description as the person who first coined the Ghost & red exclamation mark as the official malady. I was LOST as what to call it.
I think I figured out what the ghost icon means. It is essentially Avast saying that while there are no viruses or malware detected, there are nonetheless potential threats detected. I ran a full virus scan again on my system today but this time had the option for Avast to generate a scan report enabled. The scan concluded with 0 viruses or malware detected, as it did with the other times the ghost icon appeared. Upon checking the report file, it marked 4 items inside of 3 different ZIP files as compression bombs (ZIP bombs). (In this case though it was a false positive, the 3 zip files were just games that had unusually high compression ratios. One of the games, for example, is ~700 MB extracted but only ~150 MB for the ZIP file size. Ive extracted and ran all 3 games plenty of times with no issue, not to mention the extracted games scan completely clean with no ghost icon)
Basically, enable the option for Avast to generate a report file and then check the file to see what it is detecting as a threat on your system. Personally I feel stuff like this should be displayed as the scan conclusion though, if it were a real compression bomb that was detected it would be important information
White Ghost & exclamation mark, is what would have been an infection. It should have
shown at least one infection to delete. Nothing indicated as an infection but this icon showing.
Run a targeted scan on OneDrive You may see it only on that and your C: drive. Originally, This PC is scanned. On one computer, I deleted the files in my documents folder and it stopped
showing this icon on a full scan. On a boot time scan nothing, but only a full scan and then one folder or another.
You mentioned when an update of Avast now this is happening, and not before. I have it on five computers and I do not even use them much. A computer that I kept off line, does not have this problem as if being online may be the reason.
Keep looking into this and let me know too.
Go to menu, settings, general, troubleshoot. REPAIR APP. Afterward, you should not
see the White Ghost, Red Exclamation Point, ICON.
(0) infections, but the icon for an infection. Targeted scans may show, files in your document folder as where this issue is. or OneDrive cloud storage.
Scan after you repair app, and it shows no White Ghost, Red Exclamation Mark, Icon.
Is that what you get as a result also?
Long awaited answer from Avast (r@vast team member) re Ghost/pacman icon in scan history items:
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=237353.msg1558883#msg1558883
Exception in the Virus Macro, is a new message on a boot time scan never before seen.
Also, a decompression bomb, is another.
After "repairing app" it comes back, and all the Icons for an infection, using the macro of a White Ghost with red exclamation mark, come back within a few days.
AVG, a similar anti virus product, does the same thing with full virus scans and boot time scans.
Maybe the "exception in the Virus Macro" has this as a result. On selected target scans, if I deleted my DOWNLOAD, OR DOCUMENT FOLDERS and all the files, this does not happen anymore
on one of my computers. I have it on 5 computers, but not the ones I do not use connected to internet.
See quote from another topic:
Ghost with red exclamation point after running full and boot time scans. When I called Avast they said I have other anti virus programs that aren’t compatible with Avast. They wanted $110 to resolve the issue. I said no, I was transferred and offered $49 to fix the issue. I said no again. Don’t I pay enough to Avast to get an answer? I don’t have any other anti virus programs listed in Programs.
I suspect that you called the avast 3rd party telephone support and they have a very limited free support they are contracted to provide. Outside of that they are trying to get you to sign up to a support contract of single charge. I would recommend you have nothing to do with them, the support forums or the support ticket system is better.
As you can see from this topic the Ghost with exclamation point is nothing to worry about.
As from the quote from an avast team member in my post above yours.