scanner infected

Viruses and worms
1

Please help when I run a scan using avast home I get a message saying a virus has been detected. When I follow advice given and send it to virus chest the scanner status reads infected. What does this mean ? When I go to virus chest after scan I get results unable to scan c drive and another message error occured moving file to chest. Finally is it safe to delete all files that that turn up in virus chest after scan THANK YOU

2

The scanner isn’t infected, it is as you said “the scanner status reads infected,” the key word being ‘status’ and it applies to that scan only as an infection was found. If you start the on-demand scanner again you will see there is no infected ‘status’ reported.

There is no rush to delete anything from the chest, a protected area where it can do no harm. Anything that you send to the chest you should leave there for a few weeks. If after that time you have suffered no adverse effects from moving these to the chest, scan them again (inside the chest) and if they are still detected as viruses, delete them.

3

thank you david r

4

No problem, welcome to the forums.

5

Hi David it’s Cohen 222 again as you seem to be the main man on this site I was wondering if you could help me with the second part of my problem when i send reported viruses detected to virus chest I get message could not scan c and also error moving file

Also what is a false positive

6

  1. There are legitimate reasons why some files can’t be scanned, avast gives that reason as part of the report/list of files unable to be scanned. You have to determine if the file name and location should be access denied, etc. I would suggest using google to search for the file name and see what its associations are and why it might be denied.

  2. Files in use are often protected by the OS, that is why Tech suggested a boot-time scan as they won’t be in use and should be able to be moved. If the reported infected files are in the system32 folder it is best to disable system restore so the OS doesn’t save a copy to the System Information Information folder.

I not to sure what you mean by “when i send reported viruses detected to virus chest I get message could not scan.”
Why are you trying to scan them ? Where are you trying to send them from.

False positive speaks for itself, a positive detection that is incorrect (false), it is a good file incorrectly identified as infected. This can happen in all AVs but it is more usual when heuristics (not in avast) are used and when a generic signature (used in avast), which is trying to identify multiple detections with a single signature.

I don’t know about main man, currently I’m just recovering from a broken right wrist, so I haven’t been able to spend much time on the forums in the last 3 weeks, but it is progressing slowly.