Really simple question about the log viewer...

Hey all,

My brother stupidlly clicked on one of those MSN virus links and Avast pops-up saying something about virus. I was in the next room, so I didnt hear much. I then rushed into my bros room, I saw a little yellow box with blue border in the bottom right corner of the screen. It then quickly disappeared, and I didnt get a chance to see what it was.

I went into the Avast’s log viewer, and lucky for me I got to see what had happened. however it only states that it has been ‘found’. Does that also mean that it has been removed? Here is a pic of what Im talking about:

http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b293/Naruto28/WarningAvast.jpg

Has the ‘virus’ been removed from my PC by Avast? or has it only been ‘detected’?

Thanks

PS. I navigated to the folder in the log viewer, and found nothing, meaning that it has been removed?

Most probably the virus is gone (blocked by WebShield).
To be sure, I suggest a full avast scanning or schedule a boot time scanning with avast with archive scanning turned on.
Also, you can use SUPERantispyware and/or Spyware Terminator to scan for spywares and trojans. If any infection is detected, better and safer is send the file to Quarantine than to simple delete than.

The detections in your image are local system folders so ‘weren’t’ detected by the web shield. So they will have been detected by the Standard Shield, which means you were presented with a number of options (Repair, move to chest, delete, etc.) what did you choose ?
That is what determines if the virus has been removed from your system, the log viewer just shows detections.

I have Avast 4.8 free home version and I can not access the log viewer… why

What is the error message?
Is that the case it does not even start (open)?
What happens if you double-click
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashLogV.exe

Yes it does not open

I did double clicked the file that you mentioned and ir also does not open

Can you try to repair your installation?
Go to Control Panel > Add/Remove programs > avast! antivirus > Remove. Then choose Repair function in the popup window (Repair).
If this does not help, can you uninstall / boot / install / boot again?

Thanks I tried the first one “repair” and it did not work

I am afraid to unistall and re instal as I am in my laptop in dial up and I may loose all the updates which mat take a while to download again

I was checking in the " Log" folder and there is a large file named “setup” whcih has over 11MB
is that the file that stores the log data?

Thanks again for your time

jgarcia1

Yes. You can open this file in Notepad and copy&paste here just the last 200-250 lines of it…

Do you mean copy them here in the forum?

Isn’t it too large?

The setup.log holds cumulative information on your updates, etc. so it looks like it has grown very large. This might be a possible reason for problem with the log viewer if it can’t load it.

Try going into the program settings, logging and set the Log File size limit to something small, like 256KB you may have yours on 0 no limit. I don’t know if this will also restrict the setup.log file as it isn’t on the Logging level options, but it is worth a try. I would then suggest you reboot to ensure any changes are applied and see if a) the setup.log is reduced from the 11MB and if so can you open the log viewer.

If the above makes no difference you aren’t left with too many choices - but don’t do the reinstall without first reporting the results of the logging size change. You may be able to disable the avast self-defence module and then rename the setup.log to setup.log.old and reboot, this may generate a new setup.log but I don’t know.

You shouldn’t lose your updates, though I’m not sure which updates you are talking about, but it won’t effect anything outside of avast. I’m on dial-up too and yes it will take a bit of time to download the 20.7MB, use the link that downloads from avast not from Cnet it is quicker. http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

There aren’t many options if something isn’t working and a repair hasn’t resolved the problem, we/you don’t know if anything else might not be working correctly.

So download the latest version, go off-line, uninstall, reboot, install the latest version.

Can I try todelete 3/4 (the oldest) lines from that file, save it and see it it reduces in size?

That is besides your advise to set alimit to it?

Right now its size limit is 4096kb I do not know how it reached 11mb

It looks like it is as I though since that isn’t listed in the logging levels it doesn’t appear to be under that size restriction.

You will need to disable the self-defence, program settings, troubleshooting before editing the file.

I am including someines of the file so you can see if it is the same one or if it may be corrupted=

Thanks

1.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 registry Set registry: Software\Alwil Software\Avast\4.0\Avast4SkinFolder=C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\Skin
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 registry Set registry: Software\Alwil Software\Avast\4.0\Version=4.8
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 registry Set registry: Software\Alwil Software\Avast\4.0\VersionShort=4.8
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 registry Set registry: Software\Alwil Software\Avast\4.0\SetupVersion=1169
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 package Transferred: files 0, bytes 0, time 0 ms
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 package Retries: total 0, files 0, servers 1
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 file NeedReboot=false
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 general Return code: 0x20000001 [Nothing done]
21.04.2008 18:51:57.000 1208818317 g

If it is in the C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\DATA\log\setup.log it is the correct one. I can’t tell if it is corrupt from a few lines and it is probably to big to be opened by notepad, so you couldn’t test it for corruption like that (another text editor, wordpad, etc. perhaps).

BTW

Yesterday I got an Avast message that I hasd a Trojan as I was surfing the web

D\I proceeded to delete it.

Would that incident appear in the log?

Yes, in the Warning section.

I was able to read the file using Wordpad It dates since 2006, mayble when I installed the program.

I glanced through the lines but did not see it. Maybe it is there but since it is so big I could not find it

I do not know whether I shpuld try to delete all lines pertaing to 2006 and see if I can open it

Thansk again

Use avast log viewer.
Maybe you’re trying to see the wrong log.