Win32:Trojan-gen {Other} false positive explorer.exe

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

As header - suddenly this morning Avast 4 started reporting that explorer.exe is infected with Win32:Trojan-gen {Other} OS is Windows 2000. After HOURS of messing around I have determined conclusively that this is a false positive. Housecall and Panda both report no problems. I have run HijackThis, Spybot and Adaware6 and again nothing found. The problem is complicated by the fact that the Avast initial memory scan reports that memory is infected - this means that when the Avast reisdent scanner is initialised during boot it halts windows. If I disable it by temporarily renaming the Avast folder windows boots OK. I have tried excluding explorer.exe but Avast still reports Win32:Trojan-gen {Other} in memory as soon as I start it up. As explorer.exe is accessed during simple operations such as opening windows explorer this renders Avast absolutely useless. Up to now I have been really impressed by Avast and I would like to keep uing it. However, If I can’t find a quick solution I will have to abandon it. Does anyone have any suggestions???

Thanks
Tony

2

There should be an update available for this false positive, see here:
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?board=2;action=display;threadid=6366

:wink:

3

TMack, before starting a new thread, please search first. Many “new” threads are about issues already covered in others.

4

The problem with only posting within the one other thread that referred to this problem (which, incidentally, offered no solution at the time I posted) is that it may not be read by people who actually have a solution. The title of the other thread was “Avast update brings virus ?”, which gave NO clue about the specific problem refrred to. The title of my thread “Win32:Trojan-gen {Other} false positive explorer.exe” made it VERY clear what the issue was - and would be more likely to catch the attention of others who might have had this problem.

Anyway after only 6 hours of wasted time it is finally sorted with the latest update - issued AFTER my original post.

Tony