Hi guys - Early this morning, 12.15.2008, I booted up both my laptop and my desktop - both using AVAST professional. Both had warnings come up about a virus in the operating memory and wanted me to do a boot scan, which I did. The laptop scan said no files were infected, but as soon as I hit Internet Explorer to get on the web, the same virus box came up. Rescanned per instructions, no viruses found, but once Windows XP loads I get the same warning again.
The desktop did find a virus trojan (win32:Trojan-gen) in the C:\system volume information_restore (lots of number).exe file. Deleted it. System completed scan, loaded Win XP and got the same warning again.
Both laptops and desktops have been on avast for years and I haven’t had avast turned off at all - have gotten no warnings on any emails recently. Both computers were working fine last night - haven’t downloaded anything, athough I was doing a good bit of research on the net and turned Spybot off so I could move a bit more efficiently.
I find it suspicious that both popped up this warning at the same time. Is somebody jacking with us? Secondly, should I have deleted the trojan and what exactly is the sys vol info file and should I try to get it back?
There’s something wierd here…
What do ya’ll think?
Or do you mean it keeps coming back (which it shouldn’t in the system volume information folder) ?
If you have XP, vista32bit or Win2k, you could enable a boot time scan. Right click the avast icon, select Start avast! Antivirus, a memory scan will take place followed by the opening of the Simple User Interface, Menu, ‘Schedule boot-time scan…’ Or see http://www.digitalred.com/avast-boot-time.php.
Since you have already done an Avast “boot time scan”, I recommend a
security “2nd Opinion” ( and I do not mean Spybot ) by running “Full Scan(s)”
of the FREE Version of “SUPERAntiSpyware” from www.superantispyware.com
and/or “Malwarebytes Anti-Malware”, available from www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php .
I don’t know much about this, so please be patient with me. When I turned on both computers this morning - they are networked only in as much as they are both hooked to the DSL and I can print wireless from the laptop - I got a warning from Avast that there was virus in the memory. It asked if I wanted it to do a boot scan and I said yes. It did - the laptop turned up no infected files and I thought I was good. But when it tried to load Win (XP), I got the same warning from Avast. I let it scan everything again, and still no infected files, and it still loads the warning when it tries to load Windows. I don’t know why I get the message when Avast says there are no infected files.
On the desktop, I got a message during the boot scan that there was a Trojan in the sys volume info file. Asked what I wanted to do about it so I chose delete all. It continued to run the scan, tried to load Windows and here comes the warning from Avast again. I had to get on with work so I just ignored it and kept going.
I find it odd that a) - both computers came up with the warning at exactly the same time, especially since both were fine last night. b) - they both keep warning me about this trojan, but the boot scan finds nothing on the laptop, and after fixing the problem file on the desktop, it finds nothing but still warns me.
I saw the message on the avast home page about some virus that came in a BS download or update. I don’t know what a BS update is - could that be the avast update and both computers caught something when it upgraded? How do I fix it if avast keeps warning me, but then says it finds no bad files?
And what does the sys vol info file do anyway? Anything important???
Hi Carole :