You really are throwing out the baby with the bath water as essentially there is nothing wrong with getting that error, all as I said way back, this is just reporting something that can't be scanned not something that is infected or suspect.
All of the other tools that we have suggested are basically to confirm that there is nothing under lyingly malicious about the fact that these areas can't be scanned.
So something cant be scanned and avast reports that fact rather than leave you blissfully unaware of the fact; so changing to another antivirus that doesn't report this doesn't change the condition of your system.
There is nothing to resolve, this error condition (reporting of an invalid folder) is outside of your control, your windows folder is working as it should (or you would know about it), just that for some reason the ADS branch of the folder is reported as invalid.
Ok, David. I understand where you are coming from. But then why does Avast report this error 267 condition in the first place (that no other AV I have used has done)
if nothing can be done about it? Like you said, there is nothing to resolve. So, yes, in this case it would be better if I was blissfully unaware of the fact.
In my opinion, AV scans should report problems that can be repaired, quarantined, or removed.
Please understand that I am not technical when it comes to my desktop. I only wish to feel secure when using it. Reporting strange error conditions which cannot seem to be resolved does leave me a bit uneasy. True, switching to another AV does not change anything. But since I cannot do anything about it, I feel better not seeing any unresolveable errors or conditions.
I am not closing the door on Avast and might certainly come back to it. By the way, I did perform a rootkit scan from within Avira Antivir Personal and nothing showed up.
