Avast, I love you, but sometimes...

[aaronlt]

Sometimes I want to murder you. Like last year, when every site that exists was suddenly blocked by the webshield (because it was borked). I'm glad that was fixed, but...

This really grates my nerves. I downloaded a rather large file in bittorrent. Not porn, but a regular, non-virus infected movie file.

And then suddenly, upon completion, I noticed that bittorrent was like, "Yo, where the heck is the file, human."

And then Avast was like "Hey bro! I saw that bittorrent did something so LOL I DELETED IT."

  I went out of my way and disabled the specific P2P shield, but dayum. That's two hours that I spent to get jack crap, and now I have to start all over. That wasn't even it. What really got me was that it completely erased the file. Not even virus chested. Just gone. But actual stuff that's a virus that I've told Avast to get rid of completely--still in my virus chest. (Now deleted because... kill it.)

Sometimes, Avast, you enrage me. Rarely, but still. That's just... Urgh.

I don't even.

[AntiVirusASeT]

not trying to doubt u, but almost anything can be infected...especially files gotten from p2p clients.

so may i ask u, how do u actually know that a file is uninfected?

an infected file may do what u think it should do, eg. the movie, but do something malicious in the background, eg. trojan dropper?, malicious scripts running?

never assume a file is safe unless from trusted sources to be reasonably safe urself.  but even than, ur not 100% safe...

try making a habit to upload ur files to virustotal to be scanned with 40plus antivirus scanners. (a rather simple way to see if a file is likely to be safe or malicious). 

remember though, u can only significantly reduce ur chances of being infected.  theres no such thing as being totally safe.

i suggest u use p2p clients with a lot of caution and do not turn off the p2p shield of Avast.  at least consult this forum about the file ur downloading so that the more technical guys can help u do a lookup on the file.

i do not use the p2p shield as i do not install any p2p clients on my computer...(in my opinion p2p clients are too dangerous as unknown users are the source of all ur downloads).  so i do not know if theres a setting where u can change the p2p shield in Avast to move to virus chest instead of deleting the files u download.

note: virustotal cannot upload files too big... in that case, use reputable antimalware scanners like malwarebytes, hitmanpro, superantispyware to do a secondary check on ur files.

[Asyn]

so i do not know if theres a setting where u can change the p2p shield in Avast to move to virus chest instead of deleting the files u download.

Sure.

[Tetsuo]

Default actions for the P2P Shield are:

(in order)

1. Move to Chest
2. Delete
3. No Action

So the first default action is "Move to Chest". Only if that action fails, then Avast tries to delete the file.
For your convenience you may change the default actions if you want. However, I do think the default ones are the most appropriate for that shield.