Hi,
Windows XP Pro SP3 - completely Up to date
Avast! 7
I ran a Full System scan: and the results said that not all files could be scanned because they are password protected.
"Error: Archive is password protected"
IIRC these are compresses files so unless I uncompressed them they are not potentially harmful as is.
Is that right?
Not entirely correct that compressed files are not potentially harmful. Avast doesn't scan archives (exceptions below) for the reason you mention.
Files that can't be scanned are just that, not an indication they are suspicious/infected, just unable to be scanned.Many programs (usually security based ones) password protect their files for legitimate reasons, there are others (and avast doesn't know the password or have any way of using it even if it did know it).
By examining 1) the file name, 2) reason given by avast! for not being able to scan the files, 3) the location of the files, you can get an idea of what program they relate to. You may need to expand the column headings (as mentioned) to see all the text.
If you can give some examples of those file names, the locations of these files that can't be scanned might help us further ?
Exceptions:
But some archives are executable, installation files are compressed archives, so you will see that there are types of archive which are scanned by default.
The boot-time scan also scans al archives by default.