I am a happy owner of Avast Internet Security v8.0 under my Window 7 64-bits.
Today I discovered that into my 'c:\programdata\avast software\avast', there was a file ‘fw.db’ of 600Mb bytes long…
Searching into internet, it seems a known problem related to firewall logs.
My first try was to find some option, to purge this file, but I didn’t find anything about.
My second try was to erase logs entries by using Avast firewall UI. I went to firewall logs window, and 5 minutes after the application froze, I was able to clean everything.
This didn’t affect the file size… but if it is a database file, this isn’t unusual.
My third try, was to disable all Avast shields and services, rename the file as admin to see if the program survives. No way, this file seems to be protected by some system setting.
I have tried also the SysInternals MoveFileEx utility, but again no way.
My forth try should be disable UAC, and try again, but I was quite tired and I skipped it.
My omega/final try was using an Ubuntu live CD, to do the work. I renamed the file and rebooted, and the program created a new reasonably smaller file.
As far as I could saw, no problem was risen.
Then I rebooted again, and used Live CD to delete the renamed file once for all.
This is the end of my ‘fw.db’ file war chronicles, but maybe there is a simpler way to maintain this file.
If there isn’t, is it possible to consider to add it?