Running Avast Pro version 6.0.1289 with virus definition 111209-2 on Windows 7 with current “critical” patches applied, including reboot.
The system may be infected. Here are my observations and at the bottom are my questions:
These 3 shields were discovered disabled and cannot be started, turned on nor fixed from the Summary or Real-Time Shields pages: File system; P2P; IM.
I then saw that a new version of the Avast program 6.0.1367 was available, and attempted to upgrade. However, the upgrade was almost finished when Windows 7 (the operating system,not just a program) crashed. I rebooted the system. All 3 of the same disabled services remain disabled and cannot be restarted or fixed from the Avast UI.
Am able to ping avast.com & google.com; however, am unable to connect to them via http (via a web browser).
Keep in mind that another computer in my house running Avast Pro is not having any of these problems.
Windows task manager shows very low CPU utilization and very low network bandwidth utilization, 0.01%-0.05% of 65 Mbps bandwidth (802.11n).
Questions:
(1) Is this definitive evidence of a virus having taken control of the system?
(recall that http web access is not working, unable to use the eicar.org test)
(2) Is there a way to create an Avast boot disk on another computer and scan the other system’s disk using that? If not, how should I proceed?
(the virus definition file is not updated and cannot be updated. This suggests that a boot time scan of the existing system will not find the virus)
Please advise.
Regards,
QueueNut