Windows 7 Pro, Avast 7.0.1474
I am careful with what emails I open and what I download, etc. etc.
I was looking at a pdf from a scientific organization (calacademy.org, to be exact, this one unless they’ve changed it since last night: http://research.calacademy.org > SSI >, the Advisers & Projects pdf, in Firefox, and in the middle of it, Avast gave an alert, something about malware. I had a bunch of other tabs open, the same ones I’ve had open. Avast suggested running a boot scan.
During the overnight boot scan, it found 7 suspect files, which I put into the chest (however, there are 8 dated from last night). I’ve attached a screen shot of the chest; the last 8 are the files in question. Four days ago, I disabled Java and updated it to the most current version; I also did Adobe), and six days ago I updated Windows.
When the boot scan was finished and after I logged into Windows, I got the same message in the lower right that many others have gotten, that my copy of Windows is not genuine. I purchased this laptop from Dell and have never had an issue with that. I ran the Microsoft Windows validation online, and it says that it is genuine.
I have not rebooted or done anything else in the way of installations/removals except to install the control in IE to run the validation.
I’d appreciate some help with this–I don’t want to unnecessarily mess things up (or pay $69 for someone else to mess it up). None of these eight files were in places that I’d expect to cause an issue like this (but I’m obviously not a virus/malware expert). Do any of these look like false positives? And is there anything else to do about the Windows not genuine message?
Thanks.