I'm an amateur with zero tech ability. I have Avast Premium on a PC with Win7. When I first saw the malware threat alert I panicked and ran a boot scan which found 219 files. I monkeyed around pressing the fix or repair buttons in the virus chest but nothing seemed to happen. I didn't delete anything that I know of.
After the problem was declared fixed and I noticed the alerts were no longer appearing, I right clicked on all the files in the virus chest and clicked restore. There was no indication anything happened and the files were still there. The computer seemed to work fine.
My next move, which was probably totally backwards and counter-intuitive, was to do a system restore. After following this thread I wasn't convinced the problem was fixed in spite of how well my computer seemed to be running. Somehow the system restore to 2/17 went smoothly.
After the system restore I discovered the malware-gen files still in the virus chest but will take the experts word for it that they are duplicates. It's been over 12 hours and there's no sign of trouble. I won't go near the boot scan again. The Avast smart scan revealed nothing wrong, as well as scans by Malabytes, Adware Cleaner, and Spyware Blaster which before and after the false positive event, showed nothing wrong.
I'm not sure I'm really in the clear but wanted to let people know that system restore somehow worked for me. What happens when I uninstall Avast? I'm looking for another AV/Firewall that doesn't require a lot of user tech ability and is more responsive to customers. I've seen way too many uppity, snarky, captain-obvious, holier-than-thou, responses on this thread - geez, you aren't helping anyone and only hurting the Avast brand.
I can't fix a car either.