When I turned on my PC this evening avast flagged up a “suspicious hidden item” and said that it could potentially be a rootkit.
File Name: SVC:Stereo Service
Location:C:\Programs
I was wondering if anyone else had experienced this. Is it a genuine threat or a false positive. The thing is, I reinstalled the OS recently and
I haven’t really been on the internet with it much, let alone downloaded anything. Help?
Really grateful to anyone who can illuminate things 
Do you have an Nvidia video card? If you do it may be related to the 3D portion of the Nvidia drivers.
Actually this post popped up right in the middle of a driver update. Do you think that could be why?
Possibly, unfortunately I don’t use Nvidia so I can’t say for sure. I’d do a full scan with the free version of Malwarebytes and see if it flags anything. If not, it may be a false positive from Avast.
upload suspicious file(s) to www.viristotal.com and test with 40+ malware scanners
when you have he result, post link to scan result here
Hello,
I’m having the same issue. I just updated my NVidia Geforce drivers to the latest version and Avast warned me also for having this rootkit in SVC Stereo Service at the end of the install process. Malwarebytes found my computer to be clean, and the same thing with another rival anti-rootkit utility.
Avast didn’t warn me again when I reinstalled the NVidia drivers. Full scan also didn’t find anything anymore.
Avast probably became suspicious of the driver file behaviour
I was also in the middle of installing a new Nvidia Driver when this popped up. I have a Nvidia GeForce 9800 GT, I downloaded Version 310.90 off of here: http://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/55123/nvidiaupdate
I have Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 64 bit.
About half way through the installation, Avast popped up with a red warning saying “SVC: Stereo Service Rootkit Hidden Service (or it might have been Hidden Source, can’t remember)”. I tried to save it to the virus chest but it wouldn’t give me the option, it only said I could delete it or ignore it, so I chose to delete. Then Avast said it had to do a boot scan so I did, but it didn’t find anything.
I’m very confused, Avast won’t show me when it deleted it or where it was deleted from, doesn’t it keep a record of what it deletes? Did anyone ever determine if this was an Nvidia problem or a real rootkit? I had literally just scanned the computer with a boot scan the day before, and it came up clean. The only thing I did when I booted it up was to download this driver.