No, I’m not. But we’re discussing verbose of the log… Of course avast can access all files on-access and being load in the memory. On-demand is another history…
20-11-2008 11:56:40 1227178600 bank 1428 AAVM - scanning error: x_AavmCheckFileDirectEx: avfilesScanReal of C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\ADMINISTRATOR\APPLICATION DATA\MOZILLA\FIREFOX\PROFILES\MZPVQBMS.DEFAULT\PREFS.JS failed, 00000005.
21-11-2008 07:26:38 1227248798 bank 1184 AAVM - scanning error: x_AavmCheckFileDirectEx: avfilesScanReal of C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\ADMINISTRATOR\APPLICATION DATA\MOZILLA\FIREFOX\PROFILES\MZPVQBMS.DEFAULT\PREFS.JS failed, 00000005.
This shows that Avast tries to scan a file in the administrator account, when I’m logged on the “bank” account! This should give an access violation, of course. But, as I said, it must be an on-access scan. I don’t run any scans when i do banking I just run Firefox and Java.
The problem seems to be reproducible. Maybe it is related to logon. I have seen other files in DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS being involved. Seems to be a little random.
Is there any way to find out what causes Avast to scan these files, like which program tried to access the file?
avast does not go and scan files of its own accord. It is scanning the files being accessed by the programs running on your system.
In this case you appear to logged on as user “bank” (and I am guessing that this is a non-administrator user). It appears that your default Firefox profile is set up in the administrator account. Firefox is trying to access the prefs.js (Firefox settings) in the administrator’s account when you are logged on as “bank” and avast is trying to scan the file under those credentials too. So the access is denied.
I managed to solve this problem! It turns out that my firewall checks a lot of files for some good reason, and only a few files are inaccessible.
I used Sysinternals’ Process Monitor to produce a boot log of an entire session. Awesome program! It will tell you all about which program opens those inaccessible files (and everything else!). I recommend this procedure to all users with 00000005 problems.
I take it that this also relates to your other topic on the error numbers (00000002 and 00000008) e.g. the firewall poking around ans avast being forced to scan what it is poking ?