Yesterday my son turned on the computer and received some message about malware.
He ran a scan and it opened a window listing files it was unable to scan.
He moved them (maybe not all) to the virus chest, restarted the computer, and reran the scan.
That’s when I saw a list of files it could not scan.
I tried to move the files to the chest – error occured during moving file.
I tried to delete them – error occured during file deleting.
Avast has found a few bad files for us in the past. I’m never quite sure what to do. I move them to the virus chest and hope the computer doesn’t need them. This has seemed to work, except that we now get a message from aim.exe telling us it’s unable to locate a component. AIM_xmlp.dll not found.
I’m not sure when that message began to appear, maybe NOT after I moved something.
We have a HP Media Center PC running microsoft windows xp media center edition Version 5.1. Our avast version is 080313-0. I don’t know when our subscription will expire – hope it will tell me.
Files that can’t be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.
By examining 1) the reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 2) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings to see all the text.
most of the files are c:\Cocumentsand settings. . . temporary Internet files . . . Comic Collector Live Set UP . . .
unable to scan CAB (or OLE) archive is corrupted
C:\1386\Apps\ . . . Worldwide-MediaCenter\games
unable to scan
The file is a decompression bomb
(this one is scary)
D:\PRELOAD\BASE_08.INP
CAb archive is corrupt
the file names are not complete or even completely accurate. I didn’t know AVAST was checking the D disk which is a backup.
This list of files that cannot be scanned never appeared before.
thanks for your help – any more suggestions? I don’t know whether or not we’re infected with something. This is just different.
Don’t worry. Just avast was not able to unpack and scan the archive. The archive files are inert, won’t harm.
Don’t worry either.
Decompression bomb is just something that unpacks to an unusually big amount of data even though it’s rather small (i.e. has a high compression ratio, for example). It’s nothing to worry about, you are just informed that avast! will not try to unpack the archive (you may not even know that it’s an archive, but it seems like it is) because it may take VERY long to process.
(quoted from Igor: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=15389.msg131213#msg131213)
I’d suggest to ignore these files.
But you can change values into avast4.ini file to configure how avast should work with these files. Click ‘Settings’ in my signature for more info
If you run a hard disk scan, all hard disks are scanned.
Maybe just that you’ve not noticed before.
Maybe you check more options in the Report settings (hard errors, for instance).
Thank you.
What about that original malware message??? My son doesn’t remember what it said.
I’ve been afraid to send emails because I don’t want to spread anything bad around.
Check the chest for this file AIM_xmlp.dll . If it’s there, create a temporary folder somewhere where you can remember it’s name and location. Then in the chest, right click the file and select extract. In the box that opens, set the destination to the folder you created.
Submit the file to virustotal to see what other scanners have to say.
To submit a file to virustoal, please click on this link
another symptom(?):
my hotmail email account (but not my son’s – his is still normal) will not let me send email messages. When I try I get this:
(a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark in it) “Before you can send this message, you must pass a random check to confirm that your account is valid. This helps us prevent automated programs from sending junk e-mail.”
(then in blue) “confirm your email account.”
this began right after the malware incident described above. I haven’t clicked on that blue invitation.
Does this message come from AVAST? Or is it someone trying to find my email password?
Disable System Restore and reenable it after step 3.
Clean your temporary files.
Schedule a boot time scanning with avast with archive scanning turned on.
Use SUPERantispyware and/or Spyware Terminator to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete than.
