I hope this is the appropriate place to post this; if not please direct me.
I am using Avast Free Antivirus 5.1.1000, Virus Definitions Version 110516-1.
My system is Windows XP Home, fully patched.
On 5/13/11 Avast flagged a small text file in its original location and also in each of 140 backups on an external hard drive. The file is unimportant so I asked Avast to remove all 141 copies of the file - the Avast program froze.
I copied the text file and deleted it from its original location, then pasted it somewhere else. The next day Avast reflagged the text file in its new location along with the 140 copies of the original file in 140 backups.
This morning Avast was only 71% complete in scanning my system even though it is previously always finished in the morning.
I attach the suspect file. The title of the text document is “autorunningCD’s”. The file itself is a text document I created from advice in a tech forum many years ago. It has been sitting in a folder on my computer since then.
I think I can guess the line in it that Avast objects to. I would be glad to remove it from my system but that would involve deleting it from 140 backups; Avast appears unable to remove it from even one backup.
The problem is that the file also exists now in every backup I have on my external drive. When I ask Avast to remove it, Avast freezes. Even if I only ask Avast to remove copies from two or three of the 140 backups on the drive it freezes.
So this tiny text document is flagged over a hundred times, once for the original and the others in the backup. It’s been on my hard drive for many years.
I suppose that while I wait for the update to correct it I will have to turn off the scheduled full system scan because my system has to be rebooted each time Avast freezes.
The engine is updated to version 110518-1 and the current program version to 6.0.1125.
Avast ran last night and did NOT flag the data file in my backups.
Although I cannot tell where in the Avast to see exactly which drives it scanned, the “amount of data tested” suggests Avast scanned everything, that is, my two internal hard drives and the external backup drive with the 140 copies of the file in question.
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