Ransomware Protection Problem

Hello

I am using Avast Free Antivirus… and this decision was made because of the ransomware protection, because I can add folders and filetypes on my own. Thats great!

But I have a problem with it…

Sometimes Avast shows multiple popups ( maybe 5-6 at once ) “new app try to access a file: allow / disallow”… and these popups flicker somehow. It is a loop of Avast, trying to bring each of these popups to front. I can see that in taskbar as a cycle through these popups from left to right, restarting at the left again… over and over again. Each “bring popup to front and switch to next popup” just need few milliseconds… which makes all this somehow “flickering”.

If this happens…

… it is nearly impossible to click the buttons
… it is impossible to read anything at these popups
… it is not possible to move the popups
… it is not possible to move other windows
… it is not possible to kill task with taskmanager
… it is nearly impossible to use all other parts of windows/desktop

The reason why all this is nearly impossible is because of the flickering. If I try to move a window with mouse… the action is immediately canceled because Avast try to bring one of the popups on top.

This is not all the time… this happens just sometimes… and looks random.

The only thing I can do at this point… is clickspam at the location where the “disallow” buttons are… in hope that the clicks will hit the buttons one by one… to finally stop this. Please dont think that just 6 clicks would be enough if there are 6 popups. It needs dozens of clicks for each and every popup and a lot of luck that the clicks will hit the buttons. It’s really crazy.

As said, I’m using the Free Antivirus… and I would like to purchase Avast just because of the ransomware protection where I can configure my own folders and filetypes.

So please let me know if you have same experience… and if this is also at the paid version of avast… ?!

Many greetings

Do you have your setting on Smart mode or Strict mode?

I am using strict mode

I believe that the Smart Mode is the default, did you change it to Strict Mode ?

If so try changing it back to Smart and see if that reduces the volume of popups.
I would suggest that after making this change back to Smart Mode that you do a system restart to make sure it taks effect.

I use the smart mode with protection of all files and I have no problems in normal use of the PC.

Yes, Smart mode was default. I was changing it to strict. I will try to set it back later. But actually most of the apps ( I want ) are allowed. So there are not that much popups anymore.

I would have though if most of the Apps you want are allow, I would have thought it would have lowered to a dull roar (presumably you have enough of these to get multiple notifications).

Hopefully, dropping back to the Smart Mode will stop most of these.

The reason you were getting a ton of pop ups is because Strict mode flags everything until you either allow or deny it. Smart mode will allow must trusted/well known apps and processes make changes to files in your protected folders.