avast! Antivirus and Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware have put a few viruses into the quarantine/virus chest. The viruses have been in there for several weeks now
If the viruses have been in there and I haven’t noticed any computer problems with the infected file in the chests, is it safe to click delete/remove without encountering computer problems?
I’m not completely sure how the quarantine works so I’m not sure if I am supposed to keep them in quarantine/virus chest or if I should click remove/delete… (This doesn’t remove them from the chest where it can return to harming my computer does it?)
I would assume I’m not supposed to leave the viruses in the chest forever?
What I should do?
It’s up to you really. The virus chest holds the malicious files and prevents any access to them. There is no harm in keeping them in the chest, as they will be unable to infect your computer any further.
You can delete them, or report them to Avast if they are false positives. Either way, you are completely safe from the files while they are in the chest. Don’t “Restore” them though, that will put them back onto your computer from where they came.
In avasts case files in the chest have the name changed and are encrypted.
If you check the chest location from outside with explorer C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\chest all you will see are the names allocated by avast not the original file name. So even if you knew it was there you wouldn’t know the name assigned, so it couldn’t be run from the outside.
When you open the chest you then see the different sections the only one you are concerned with is the Infected Files section, then you can see what the original file name, but only avast can access the chest.
There is no rush to delete anything from the chest, a protected area where it can do no harm. Anything that you send to the chest you should leave there for a few weeks. If after that time you have suffered no adverse effects from moving these to the chest, scan them again (inside the chest) and if they are still detected as viruses, delete them.
