Author Topic: Did I accidently delete important files or were these unimportant?  (Read 1640 times)

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Offline kravmagaclay

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[This post is related to the post I made a few days ago in the Avast Secure Browser section of the forums, the post titled "Potential Malware? New Avast Browser processes and files installed on startup", please read that post for the context of this post]

As stated in the other post, on June 4th upon booting my laptop I found new processes in the task manager: Avast Browser (32bit) and Avast Browser Setup (32bit) (Image3, Image1). Alongside these new processes were also new files that were created on startup, specifically an entire new folder of files (C:\Program Files (x86)\GUMFFAD.tmp) (Image2). As far as I could tell the entire folder's contents were just related to the Avast Secure Browser and had no actual relation or importance to Avast Antivirus. While I had Avast Secure Browser installed (since it was installed automatically, and I never bothered to uninstall it) I never used Avast Secure Browser. I don't really like new files or processes being added to my laptop without my permission and without being informed, so I uninstalled Avast Secure Browser then and there. While that removed the browser itself and the files associated with it, the GUMFFAD.tmp folder and those two processes (Avast Browser (32bit) and Avast Browser Setup (32bit)) were not removed. I could not kill the processes through task manager (which means I could not delete them since they were in use) and the Avast Browser uninstaller downloaded from the support page did nothing. After restarting my laptop the processes did not start up, so in the end I was able to delete those files.

What I would like to know is if those files were important or not to Avast Antivirus (as in if they were just Avast Secure Browser files or if they were in some capacity important to Avast Antivirus. In other words, if deleting those files will affect or damage Avast Antivirus in any way, such as the scans or core shields or virus definitions or anything). I would also like to know why those files were installed on my laptop upon startup and what they were supposed to do. As far as I could tell, the processes did nothing (perhaps they downloaded improperly, meaning the files were broken/corrupted?) I had tried to manually run the AvastBrowserUpdateSetup.exe file from the folder and all it did was give an "Unknown Installer" error (or at least I think that is what it was, it has been a few days since I deleted those files. I know it gave me an error). I ran a full system scan with Avast and also directly scanned the folder from Windows Explorer, and the files were digitally signed (Image4), so I am fairly confident those files were not a virus.

*Note: Image2 only shows a portion of the GUMFFAD.tmp folder, there were a few more files in there. No subfolders in it.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2020, 10:49:09 PM by kravmagaclay »

Offline Asyn

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Re: Did I accidently delete important files or were these unimportant?
« Reply #1 on: June 08, 2020, 09:42:44 AM »
What I would like to know is if those files were important or not to Avast Antivirus (as in if they were just Avast Secure Browser files or if they were in some capacity important to Avast Antivirus. In other words, if deleting those files will affect or damage Avast Antivirus in any way, such as the scans or core shields or virus definitions or anything).
Nope, if you don't use ASB, you won't need them.
W8.1 [x64] - Avast Free AV 23.3.8047.BC [UI.757] - Firefox ESR 102.9 [NS/uBO/PB] - Thunderbird 102.9.1
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Offline kravmagaclay

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Re: Did I accidently delete important files or were these unimportant?
« Reply #2 on: June 08, 2020, 10:17:42 AM »
Thank you. I was fairly certain those files were only important for ASB, but I am a rather paranoid person so the slight possibility of "maybe they were important to Avast Antivirus" kept nagging at me. I guess a few days ago everyone who has Avast got those files downloaded at startup too? (Or at least everyone who had ASB installed)

Offline Asyn

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Re: Did I accidently delete important files or were these unimportant?
« Reply #3 on: June 08, 2020, 10:29:09 AM »
You're welcome.
W8.1 [x64] - Avast Free AV 23.3.8047.BC [UI.757] - Firefox ESR 102.9 [NS/uBO/PB] - Thunderbird 102.9.1
Avast-Tools: Secure Browser 109.0 - Cleanup 23.1 - SecureLine 5.18 - DriverUpdater 23.1 - CCleaner 6.01
Avast Wissenswertes (Downloads, Anleitungen & Infos): https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=60523.0