I’ve installed Avast and I believe it’s working, but it would be nice to test it - to see it work. Is there, perhaps, an infected file with the virus signature intact but with the malicious part of the virus disabled that could be downloaded just to be sure that the Scanner detects it?
If not, might I suggest that you create a downloadable dummy virus - completely harmless binary gibberish - and then put its signature into the database. Just so folks have a way to verify their installation and see how Avast behaves when it catches something.
A question. I tried downloading the eicar file to one of my other machines that has a different AV package installed. Immediately on downloading, that AV popped up a detection message. On the Avast machine, downloading caused no reaction. If I scanned the file or tried to execute it, Avast popped up. I have the Avast Web Shield running - I even tried setting the Sensitivity slider to High.
Is this proper operation for Avast. It activates only if I try to execute an infected file or deliberately scan it and not if I just put it on my hard disk?
You don’t say what the eicar test file was that you downloaded ?
If it were a zip or a non-executable file/s on the normal standard shield settings they might not be scanned.
Archive (zip, etc.) files are by their nature are inert, you need to extract the files and then you have to run them to be a threat. Long before that happens avast’s Standard Shield should have scanned them and before an executable is run that is scanned.
The Web shield only scans http traffic so if you used the https (secure, encrypted) connection the web shield won’t scan it, try clicking this link the web shied should alert, http://www.eicar.org/download/eicar.com.
You need to set up your browser to use the web shield proxy in win9x, winME, so files can be scanned before they arrove in your browser cache. Firefox also has a extension less browser cache so the file on creation won’t be seen as eicar.com.
David, I use the Firefox browser and am using the proxy for my accelerator with localhost & 8080. Does this mean avast will not protect me? My accelerator won’t work without this proxy setting. Thanks
Add the 8080 (use a comma to separate values) to the redirected ports in the Web Shield Customize section e.g. 80,8080 and uncheck the Ignore local communication.
So, why do you think Firefox with your accelerator was not working, i.e., not being scanned by WebShield?
When you browse, does the provider scanning counter increase?
Easy to test, click this link, it is a harmless test file. Web Shield Test - http://www.eicar.org/download/eicar.com if the web shield and your 8080 proxy are working together then you should get an alert, earplugs in and begin.
