I have some files in the chest that may or may not be infected. Sometime I might move them to their original location if they scan OK. How do I copy the chest folder to another location as a back-up?
I want to do this in case I ever have to restore my hard drive. Then I will have the chest backed-up along with my other important files/folders
Well, you can copy the whole \Data\Chest folder.
However, note that it’s a complete “state” of the Chest - you cannot merge the content with a different Chest, you can only overwrite it over a different Chest. (What I’m trying to say is that if you move some other files into the Chest of the newly installed avast! and then copy the backed-up Chest folder back, you’ll lose the newly moved files and will be back at the original backed-up Chest content).
Also - I really don’t know if it’s necessary, but just for sure - it might be a good idea to stop avast! services (namely ashServ.exe - “avast! Antivirus” service) before overwriting the Chest with the backed-up copy). Also, it is probably necessary to disable avast! self-defense first.
All in all, maybe it’s not worth the trouble 
I have a similar problem. I have many files in the chest and 90% of them are HTML files, infected with a HTML virus. I can desinfect all the files manually, I just delete a specific line in the source - why can’t avast do such an easy job, I don’t know… Anyway, my system got infected again and I have to reinstall the system. The problem is, I can’t browse files in the chest trough the avast program, and I can’t recover them. The message: “Action was completed with errors!” appears.
So… I need to know for sure, if I reinstall the system, will the new avast be able to recover the chest files if I just simply copy them into the new chest folder?
Thanks.
The chested files are deleted when avast is uninstalled.
You need to copy (backup) them before.