strange error

I just installed Avast, and I tried testing it with the eicar.com file. It obviously detected it but when that “virus alert” menu appeared and I chose the option “delete” a weird msg appeared saying Avast cannot access my harddrive. I tried the other options rename, repair, the same result. I run win98, it’s my home computer so there can’t be any problems with administration rights. Plus it’s the first antivirus(and I used a lot before) ever to say that-so I’m absolutely positive there’s nothing wrong with my computer. And when I tried the on demand scanner it was able to delete the eicar file. I wanted to use this av but if the on access scanner doesn’t function, I think I’ll have to uninstall it. I mean, I won’t waste my time running the on-demand scanner every time there’s a virus, I want to be able to delete viruses with the on-access scanner. otherwise what’s the use of it, only to say it found a virus and can’t do nothing about it?

A screenshot of the error message would be handy.

Thanks
Vlk

Actually I can’t take a screenshot cause I can’t open anything else until I click OK and that msg desappears. But it literally says:
avast!: Access is denied
cannot process : “C\windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content IE5\CHGNYBAV\eicar(1).com” file.

Did you use this folder intentionally or you receive the eicar file by email or download?

You mean your system freeze at avast! detection and you could not click anything else?

Hmm, access denied? That’s strange… I thought it would be a ‘sharing violation’ error instead - but anyway, does the file exist? I mean, can you see it in the Explorer (or whatever file manager you use) after you dismiss that avast window? And can you delete it?

Have you set the resident scanner sensitivity to ‘High’? Is this an alert that is triggered when you’re opening the file, or rather saving it (or IE saving it to its cache) – I mean, at what stage does the alert virus happen?

Does the same behavior occur even if you try to run that eicar file?

Thanks
Vlk

Won’t be good a boot time scanning and cleaning the eicar files that remains in the system before we start to guess about what is happening?

???

I got the file from www.eicar.org, just clicked on the eicar.com link. As I said, the on demand scanner is able to delete it, only standard shield has this problem. I tried opening it from the folder where the browser put it(temporary internet files) and the same error occured. When manually scanning the folder, avast! could delete it.
I also tried extracting a real virus I know I had in an archive. This time standard shield found the virus and deleted it, there was no error. Might it just be that standard shield has problems in accessing the C:\windows folder? Or is it a problem avast! has with the eicar test file? By the way, i scanned all my computer with avast!, thorough scan enabled, it found no viruses.

Sometimes I had the same error with previous versions of avast, i.e., I could not delete the eicar.com file. But it was a long time ago and I did not try it more :-\