I have a VirtualBox VM that I use infrequently. When I tried to launch it today, I got a COM error and VirtualBox didn't start.
I downloaded and installed the latest version of VirtualBox as the simplest means to solve the problem, which lead me to discover that Avast had installed some custom version of VirtualBox (which needed to be stopped for the proper install to continue).
After that was done, I found that the virtual machine in question was gone. Configuration file and virtual disk image wiped clean. I was initially peeved at Oracle, figuring their upgrade process had nuked the files. So I began a restore from backup. Nothing there from a backup done on 2014-12-02. I had to go back to a backup done on 2014-11-18 to restore the files, which means something between the 18th of November the 2nd of December deleted them. What happened in that time frame? The Avast 2015 update.
How on earth could you write an install routine of any kind that deleted data in a directory you had no business even touching?
I only keep 32 days of backup, and do VM image backups twice a month. So I was less than a week away from losing this data forever.
I've uninstalled the NG feature. Is this going to be enough to prevent Avast from nuking my data in the future?
