How to teach avast to ignore a troublesome program and its directory

[Bigun]

Reference Avast 4.8 Home edition

I have been using the above edition of Avast for a little over three days. From the very beginning, Avast began flagging three of my programs as containing a virus when in fact I know the programs to be free of any type of malware. I am sure that the behavior the programs is what got Avast's attention. I was able to exclude two the programs from further scrutiny by going to the program's settings menu and selecting "exclusions". Before I was successful in doing this I tried to tell Avast to "take no action". Something that I did along the way left the programs in an inoperable state and I had to reinstall programs. With one program, nothing that I have done causes Avast to exclude scanning the program or exclude the program's directory from being scanned and/or being marked as containing a virus. In addition to being flagged as containing a virus, the program remains in an inoperable condition.

I have tried telling Avast to ignore the program as well as trying to exclude the program and its directory from any further scanning. I have searched the forum for posts that discuss the same problem that I am having with my Avast installation. Apparently my problem is not a common one because there are very few posts on the same subject. It may be that Avast users that have had a similar problem have found the solution to their problem on their own and not found it necessary to go to the forum looking for a solution.

I would appreciate help on how to teach Avast to ignore a program and allow me to reinstall the program after it has been disabled.

[Lisandro]

As you know, you need to use the Exclusion lists:

For the Standard Shield provider (on-access scanning):
Left click the 'a' blue icon, click on the provider icon at left and then Customize.
Go to Advanced tab and click on Add button...

For the other providers (on-demand scanning such as the screen-saver or the Simple User Interface):
Right click the 'a' blue icon, click Program Settings.
Go to Exclusions tab and click on Add button...

You can use wildcards like * and ?.
But be careful, you should 'exclude' that many files that let your system in danger.

But better, can you inform the file as being a false positive? (click on the bottom right of the virus warning message).

To know if a file is a false positive, please submit it to VirusTotal and let us know the result. VirusTotal has a file size limit of 10Mb. You can use VirScan also.
If it is indeed a false positive, send it in a password protected zip to virus@avast.com. Please, mention in the body of the message why you think it is a false positive and the password used. Thanks.

Maybe you need to disable Hide protected operating system files and enable View hidden files and folders to manage the file(s).

[Bigun]

I submitted the file to Avast as a false positive form posting my inquiry. It may have been a full day between the time that I submitted the file and the time that I  posted my question on this forum. I have not received a reply from Avast to my file submission.

I keep the "show hidden and system files" option on all of the time.

Besides changing the sensitivity setting for the standard Shield provider, I may delete the program causing the problem and reinstall it. Any other suggestion you might have would be appreciated - especially if the reinstallation of the program does not solve the problem.

Thank you

[DavidR]

You will not normally receive a reply unless they require any more information.

There has been a VPS update since then I believe, have you scanned the file again (you can't do that if you have excluded it, but if you left a copy in the chest you could scan it there ?

Reinstalling the program being detected again wouldn't change things unless the file in question was different from that on your system.

Did you do as Tech suggested upload it to virustotal ?

You could also check the offending/suspect file at: VirusTotal - Multi engine on-line virus scanner and report the findings here the URL in the Address bar of the VT results page. You can't do this with the file securely in the chest, you need to extract it to a temporary (not original) location first, see below.

Create a folder called Suspect in the C:\ drive, e.g. C:\Suspect. Now exclude that folder in the Standard Shield, Customize, Advanced, Add, type (or copy and paste) C:\Suspect\* That will stop the standard shield scanning any file you put in that folder. You should now be able to export any file in the chest to this folder and upload it to VirusTotal without avast alerting.