I am now using the Home free edition. How do I set it up so that it automatically moves the suspect virus files to the vault ? Right now I can’t have it running on its own at night because it need a decision from me for each detected virus file before proceeding with scan.
I was experimenting with the export function . Now some the suspected virus files are on my desktop . When I try to delete it wont allow me , so I have to move them back to the vault. resulting in duplicates . Is it safe to delete the duplicates or should I just leave them there for a few weeks and delete them all if everything is going fine.
These automated options are only available in the Pro version. This is a limitation of the Home (free) version that it has interactive input requirement, there have to be differences in the Home/Pro version and this is one of them, the programmers have to eat ;D
In the Home version you can check the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. This way, no action will be taken and you will given the results at the end of the scan (and you can perform actions from there). Over time this will become less of an issue, as the resident, on-access scanners are designed to intercept infection before it gets into your system.
There was one suggestion to place something like the eicar test virus at the start of the first drive to be scanned in a file like ~a-eicar.com that should soon be detected and you can do the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. So you should have a list of files waiting your action.
With the different levels of protection (Web Shield, Internet Mail, P2P and Instant Messaging) and the fall back of the Standard Shield, I find the need for daily scheduled scans lessened.
How do I download the test file. Each time I try Avast wont allow me to do it . Should I shut off Avast temporarily? Do I store this file in the C:directory? tks
Just pause the WebShield provider for a while (downloading the files).
Oh, maybe you need to disable all avast because your Standard Shield settings could avoid the file to be saved in your disk.
You shouldn’t need to pause the standard shield, just the web shield so you have some protection whilst on-line.
The standard shield will most certainly alert but just select no action, ensure you aren’t on-line then you can pause the standard shield before you start moving or working with it.
The file should go in the root C:\ folder as that is where scans would start (if you selected local disks). You could start by excluding the file in its new location, C:~a-eicar.com (copy and paste this path into the exclusion) file in advance of renaming it and moving it to C:\ folder (the ~ tilde at the start of the file name ensures the file is higher up the alpha numeric order so it gets detected early on the scan.
Whilst you could get away with not adding it to the Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced, Add (exclusions) this stops it happening accidentally if you go into the c:\ folder with explorer, etc. So it should be able to be scanned by the on-demand scan but not the on-access scan.
I moved the program eicar.com to the C drive root and renamed it ~a-eicar.com However when I run Avast it does not pick it up as one of the first files . It starts by scanning windows system , then my documents etc . I am not sure when it will begin to show up . Did I do something wrong?
I don’t think you did anything wrong, I have never used this trick, I don’t see the point. As I said previously after one or two times I would have expected the detections on the on-demand scans to be very infrequent if at all when doing a standard scan without archives as the resident scanners should be catching them before getting on the HDD.
If it starts in the windows\system32\drivers which it appears to, you could put it there, alternatively you could put it in the my documents folder. I don’t know how long it would take to get past those two and locations, not long I would have thought.
Time it to see how long it takes to detect the eicar file. If it is too long then by all means move it to another location.
hi i have the pro version and im trying to answer the very same question. How do i automate the moving of virus infected files to the virus vault? when i start a full scan i have to babysit the whole process in case a virus is found.
Whilst I don’t have the Pro version, you need to have the Enhanced User Interface selected and from in there you can configure the scan parameters. Check out the avast Help file, The Enhanced User Interface and Tasks sections
i changed the tasks to move to chest instead of interactive but avast still asks me when it finds something
EDIT: Do you have to run the scan from the enhanced UI for the parameters to work? As running the scan back in the simple user interface i still get prompted for action but in the enhanced UI Avast doesnt even detect the file. the file in question is Daemon Tools.exe the enhanced UI picked up EICAR but im confused why i should get two different results based on the interface mode.
As I said I don’t use the Pro version so I can’t offer any practical advice.
As a Pro user you should only use the Enhanced User Interface, when using the SUI your options will I assume be restricted in the same way as Home users.