About three days ago I updated my Avast from an earlier 8.0 version to the latest. Within that same time frame, I have started noticing some very odd entries in my PC’s Prefetch folder. Yes, I know it’s best to leave it alone and I generally do, but I do pop it open every now and again to look in on things, and I’ve suddenly started seeing entries I have no explanation for. There are 3-4 files being created with what looks to be just GUID names, that I cannot find any reference to in the Registry or via hours of Google digging. If I delete them, at the next cold boot they’ll return, just with different letters and numbers. Reboots don’t seem to refresh their timestamps within the folder, nor create them if they are gone. I’ll attach a cropped print screen of the files in question. The only other things that were updated around the time these particular entries were made were all Avast related. Setup, Emergency Updater, etc.
I don’t really suspect any virus or anything here, as I have Avast, Comodo Firewall, and scan with Spybot Search and Destroy and Malware Bytes on demand and none of these programs are detecting problems. I also browse exclusively in a sandbox version of Firefox, with Noscript, Adblock, and Ghostery running. The only thing that has changed in my PC in the time these files have started to appear is the Avast update. I’ve not installed any other software, uninstalled any other software, downloaded anything short of a few Skyrim mods. I see nothing at all out of the ordinary in Process Explorer, every svchost is hosting the same things it always has, no other new running processes. Defense+ and Firewall haven’t alerted me to any bizarre activity.
Basically this is just for my peace of mind, as I have issues with random new things happening on my computer, and it bothers me until I figure it out. Except I can’t, as I can’t read Prefetch files, and doubt they’d tell me much anyway. Are these entries somehow related to Avast and something it’s doing at updates once a day or so? I seem to recall seeing something about Emergency Update and GUID-esque names once. If it isn’t Avast, then I suppose I may have some kind of problem that’s extremely well hidden and not at all obvious as I have noticed nothing unusual about the PC at all other than those files, and a empty folder appearing in my Appdata/Local/Temp with the same naming scheme.