I much prefer scans to just report found problems and let me decide what to do about them. Avast (Premier) is good about providing settings so that this happens, except there is one ‘action’ option for the consequent unresolved issues that I would really like to see that isn’t there: Add exception.
Currently (unless I am missing something), if a scan finds what is at least to me a false positive - like some of the Nirsoft utilities that are perfectly legitimate tools for someone to use on their own PC - the only ‘resolve’ options in the Scan History Detailed Report that shows the detected items are Auto, Delete, Repair, Chest, Nothing. So, as I want to keep the item and have Avast ignore it from now on and not keep flagging the laptop as being at risk, my only choice is ‘Nothing’ … which keeps it where it is and where I want it, but that doesn’t help with future scans - I need an exception created for the item. But that means I have to close the Scan History, go to Menu, click Settings, click Exceptions, click Add Exception, click Browse, and then navigate to the item when I can’t even see the location any more as I had to close the Scan History report that was showing it to start adding the exception. The UI won’t even let me just copy the item’s path in the detailed report so I can just paste it into the ‘Add exception’ dialogue box; and even if it did, if there’s more than one item, I would have to keep going back and forth between the Scan History Detailed Report and the Add exception interface.
This is very disappointing. There should be an ‘Add exception’ option in the selectable action list in the Scan History Detailed Report. i don’t mind if it only appears as an option if some setting is set to on with the default being off: I don’t mind if it only appears if a Geek:Area setting is enabled; it should be available, at least as an option.
You don’t say what scan you are using ?
You don’t say what avast version you are using (Avast version 19.5.2378 being the latest) ?
There are settings within the scan settings to customise what it scans and what action to take. These depend on what avast version you are using as the UI and settings differ.
The major issue with the Nirsoft Utilities, they can be used for good or evil and Avast doesn’t know which.
It sounds like you have Scan for PUPs enabled (usually disabled by default), if the detection is in fact a PUP detection ?
There are also settings to exclude files from scans.
Just to add, I have and use NirSoft tools and run them from the NirLauncher which contains “all tools”
I recently updated the NirLauncher pkg and had to make sure Avast wasn’t scanning for PUP’s
Menu>Settings>Protection> Core Shields and click ‘potentially unwanted program’ and checked “ignore PUP’s”
I also unchecked ‘Cyber Capture Technology’
The installation then went smoothly with no flags.
@ DavidGB
Having reread the topic title “Scan History unresolved action option I’d like to see” I’m unsure exactly what it is that you want.
You need to know that the Scan History, is just that a historic record (not active) of what was found and what action was taken at the time of the scan. So changing something in the Scan History won’t do anything, perhaps Avast need to make that clear in the scan history and or don’t allow changes to Action in what is an historic record.
Avast Premier (I did say), latest version (i only installed it day before yesterday after purchase).
As for the rest - ALL scans.
This is a matter of general principle, and about things I don’t know about now which I might choose to put on my computer in the future, not just things there at the moment. I am not asking for a particular solution to a particular detection like some particular Nirsoft utility. Clearly (as should be obvious from what I wrote) I have dealt with the situation now, slogged through creating exceptions now to deal with the unwanted detections now (including my complete archive of emails from the last 17 years, which I choose to keep absolutely complete, including any malware in attachments from that whole period, all harmless as archived attachments).
I started this thread not a request for a solution to some particular detection, but as an opinion I am expressing, hopefully to someone at Avast, that I think the function I asked for should exist in the program (as it exists in certain other security software I have used in the past). The program as it is now allows settings (which I have set) to NOT take any program-always-knows-best actions on detections, but just report for me to choose what to do. That’s good, and what i want. And it includes a mechanism through the exclusions for me to stop it detecting things I am fine with again in the future. That’s also good. I am just asking Avast to join those two things up so creating an exclusion as my chosen response to a detection doesn’t involve having to keep going backwards and forwards through multiple steps between the scan results screen and the exclusion screen. It is a simple ability to make life easier for people who want total control that many AV products have and which I think Avast should include.
If you don’t personally want such an ability, fine. But responses about settings that would prevent particular detections now are unwanted and quite beside the point. Avast, like every AV, is liable to make some ‘false positive’ detections from time to time and will continue to do so in the future (and what is a false positive to one person in one situation may be a justifiable positive to another in another). It therefore, in my opinion, should have joined up design between detection reports and a valid possible response of creating an exception. Basically, valid replies are only either posting in agreement, or posting with an argument as to why such an option would somehow be dangerous (even when, as I said, such an option might be included but having to be switched on, perhaps in the Geek:Area). The fact that anyone else doesn’t feel they need it or would use it themselves is neither here nor there. Why, when scan detections can already be set to take no action other than report, and exceptions can already be created as a response to that report, does it not make sense to just add an easier route between the report and creating an exception for the item reported on?