Hi! I’m using avast! free 5.0.418 on an Asus eeePC with Windows XP SP3 (all updates). The one other security program that is constantly running is ZoneAlarm’s free firewall (9.1.007.004). I recently noticed a strange phenomenon appearing when inserting (any) SD cards; I should add that all of these cards appear to be free of viruses as indicated both by avast! and Kaspersky Internet Security on another system. AutoRun for the SD cards (i.e. the standard Windows variant, suggesting different types of starting based on the file types on the card) usually works fine, but in one case, when I wanted to transport an installation file from one system to another by SD card, I noticed that Autorun wouldn’t start.
After trying around a bit, I noticed that any .exe file placed in the card’s root directory featuring the word “setup” anywhere in its name, be it a file called setup.exe or one called, say, 123setuptest456.exe (even just an empty text file renamed to setup.exe), would result in no Autorun appearing at all despite the lack of an autorun.ini file. I assume something somewhere on my system uses this as a type of protection; however, it just seems like such a strange and simple type of protection that I wanted to ask whether this might be a genuine option/feature of avast! or another program/Windows itself – or whether it might be something entirely else? Thanks for any info!
(It also reminded me that deactivating Autorun in general might not be the worst idea. Still, this seems a bit weird.)