Avast 4.8 alerted to Win32:Malware-Gen

[RONIN2010]

I use both Firefox and IE8. I checked with toolbarcop and the file is not listed. I did take your advice and decided to delete the registry key for the toolbar, which removed it from the ADD/REMOVE Programs list.

[DavidR]

That was the conclusion I came to as well. That I'm likely better off getting rid of it. I reuploaded it to virustotal and jotti and had them reanalyze it as you said. Here's the log files:
<snip>

That is more like the result I was expecting given the first scan by Jotti.

However, this is masquerading as (or is) a Verizon Broadband Toolbar, were you with Verizon broadband and if so is there nothing on their site about it and its removal ?

Plot thickens... So I DL'd the toolbarcop you pointed out and removed it. I then went back into ADD/REMOVE programs and it's still showing up, except with a file size of "0". Now when I try to remove it, it initiates the unistaller and says "The toolbar DLL was not found". This being correct, as it should be gone. But now I'm stumped as to why there's still an entry in the ADD/REMOVE programs utility for the toolbar.. I also uploaded a screenshot of the ADD/REMOVE Programs utility, that shows the file there but with a size of "0" bytes.

At least it looks like you have rid of the vol_toolbar.dll (or vol_to~1.dll) file, so presumably on a normal scan avast doesn't detect this any longer ?

So then it is down to cleaning up invalid entries as Tarq57 mentions.

[RONIN2010]

However, this is masquerading as (or is) a Verizon Broadband Toolbar, were you with Verizon broadband and if so is there nothing on their site about it and its removal ?

Yes I was with Verizon. The toolbar came bundled with their Internet Security Suite. I thought it was removed, when I had uninstalled their security suite a long time ago but it left the toolbar behind. Funny thing is I never opted to install this as I hate toolbars as well. But no, they don't have anything on their site about it's removal. Which makes me believe it's corporate spyware.

At least it looks like you have rid of the vol_toolbar.dll (or vol_to~1.dll) file, so presumably on a normal scan avast doesn't detect this any longer ?

So then it is down to cleaning up invalid entries as Tarq57 mentions.

Indeed. I did remove the entry in the ADD/REMOVE programs list by deleting the registry key for it. Avast no longer picks it up on scans, unless I scan the copy I have in quarantine. So that part was resolved. I also sent the file to AVAST support to analyze. I still have a copy of the file in the quarantine chest and am holding on to it in case it is a false positive. I really don't care for having it but in the event that something crashes due to the missing DLL I have a backup. Not likely but just in case. Odd thing was as I explained to support, this file was one of the ones that they declared a false postivie back in Dec. 09. There were 4 FP's avast detected, 3 of them being spybot files and one being this file (VOL_TO~1.DLL). They released an update to the virus defs. that remedied these being triggered. So I restored the file back to it's location, as after the update it said the file was not a threat. But now 2 months later, it's seeing it as a threat again, which is why I'm going round and round with this particular file. Still waiting on a response from support regarding whether it's a legitimate threat or a FP.

[DavidR]

There is no rush to remove items from the chest.

The problem being with this particular file is that it is detected by a generic signature and this is constantly updated as it tries to catch more of this type of malware/spyware variant with this one signature. So tweaks can include some files which weren't previously detected are caught in the net and modifications to let some through the net (like those you mentioned) may well let something else out of the net.

This is a fine balance between detecting a new variant and detecting something valid as infected, etc..