Avast's scan found two false positives on its initial bootscan -
1) I have a "Downloads" file on my Desktop.
On Download is "Sysclean", which is a Trend Micro scanner process which I had downloaded in 2005.
Neither AVG, which I've used the last few years since stopping use of Trend Micro's PC-cillin, nor Ad-Aware, nor Spybot ever found this to be a virus after numerous scans the last 3 1/2 years.
Avast states that "Sysclean.exe is infected by VBS.Redlof".
I'm sure it is simply seeing a mention of this virus in the Sysclean.exe file, but not the virus itself.
I'm sure this is a false positive, both because of the numerous scans by those other 3 scanners, and because common sense says that Trend Micro has not constructed a virus scanner which contains a virus.
2) In "My Documents", I had saved a webpage from a computer help forum. In this thread the poster had run "Hijack this" or a similar program and listed everything on his computer.
Avast listed this as a virus, stating "(the name I put on the file" is infected by JS.ADODB-BM.
As with #1 above, neither AVG, which I've used the last few years since stopping use of Trend Micro's PC-cillin, nor Ad-Aware, nor Spybot ever found this to be a virus after numerous scans the last few years.
Also, common sense says that a computer anit-virus help forum is not allowing a virus on its webpages.
I'm sure this is a false positive also.
Since the avast scan had stopped for both "infections", and I had no further need of the download, and I copied the info I had wanted to save from the saved webpage, I then deleted both of these so the avast scans wouldn't stop on these in the future.
I just ran a "Thorough" scan, and now avast has found the saved webpage in one of my "System Restore" files (but for some reason NOT in each of my "System Restore" files I've created, although if it's in one it must be in all of them).
My question is:
What can I do to prevent the avast scan from stopping when it encounters this file?
I had set avast to do the thorough scan while I slept, but when I checked it in the morning, the scan had only completed 15% and then was paused on this "Virus Alert" warning.
Also, I hope that the above info will be helpful in developing future versions of Avast's scanner so that it doesn't find these false positives in the future.