I’ve been on a tech support forum and got itchy. I decided that instead of waiting for more steps, I’d take action into my own hands and fix Avast! (Which ended up not being removed fully, I simply ran the uninstall and reinstalled it just fine).
Now overnight I ran a boot scan and it came up with 56 files, I decided to put them in the chest to make sure I was doing the right thing. Now in the chest, I think they can’t effect my PC (Who knows if I got them all), right? I’ve already noticed improvement to my computer’s performance (Even though it’s a neglected piece of machinery) and I wondered - In the chest there is the ‘delete’ ability. Now, does this delete the file FULLY from the computer, or does it just delete it from the chest’s list of files? Like, put it back to it’s original location.
Bear with me, I’m a complete and utter moron when it comes to computing stuff, minus a few exceptions.
You have done the right thing, ‘first do no harm’ don’t delete, send virus to the chest and investigate.
To that end can you give some examples of the malware name, file name and location, e.g. (C:\windows\system32\infected-file-name.xxx) ?
Check the avast! Log Viewer (right click the avast ‘a’ icon), Warning section, this contains information on all avast detections.
Or using notepad open this file C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\Warning.log and copy and paste some of those entries.
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.
I followed xxdanielxx’s advice on techspot.com and deleted the files from my chest.
I’ve been getting help on and off there about some sticky situation my PC has been in. However, all of the problems caused were definitley caused by stupid mistakes.
As an inhumane excuse for some of my PC’s sluggish-ness, I haven’t done a defragment in over 5 years. Shunn me now.
If in any circumstance I run into problems with the other website, I will move quickly to this one. However, these problems aren’t effecting any of the day-to-day things I do, I just noticed when my browser wouldn’t load certain sites I usually goto. Then I scanned and apparently had alot of bad files.
For advice on avast, I suggest you get it from the horses mouth so to speak, the avast forums.
They can do no harm in the chest and having deleted the files you have zero options left, in the chest you have many options available to you, sorry very poor advice IMHO.
The fact that you have deleted them doesn’t remove the entries in the warning.log file and the reason I asked for this information it to see if there is a pattern and if you need to do anything else.
As David mentioned above, files in the Chest should not be deleted until they are investigated to prove they are actually infected. These files can do no harm while in the Chest. When such files are deleted from the Chest, they are completely removed from your computer.
You should never delete files located in the System files section of the Chest. These files are copies of critical system files that Avast put there when you installed avast on your computer. These files are for recovery from an infection should they be needed.
I agree with David in that you got some poor advice on that other forum. Follow the advice above that David is giving to you. Give him the asked for information. Doing this also gives you the chance to learn so that you will not be “a complete and utter moron when it comes to computing stuff,” as you say.
Oh no!! ~ I had just been wondering about this too, so I went looking around in the forums for some info on what to do w/Chest files. I think I’ve been deleting mine :-[ so while I’m a little concerned about that, I’m happier to know that I should not delete them.
I might have deleted some after I installed avast! - so I hope I haven’t done too much dmg.
It is not that you should ‘never’ delete them. Deleting them in the chest shortly after sending them kind of defeats the purpose of the chest, to protect you from any potential harm of the files, but to give you more options.
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.
This is obviously related to files in the Infected Files section of the chest.
If you happened to delete files from the System Files section of the chest, I believe avast would regenerate them. Can you confirm this ?
There should be three file names in there, there may be more than one copy of some files.
