How to declare certain programs safe, OR halt avast's countdown to termination

[mark99k]

Every month or so avast blocks a program that I know to be non-malicious. The message even says avast doesn't have enough information about it to declare it malware, but it still blocks the program AND terminates it after an onscreen countdown, without giving me any options. (It does this for more than one program; none of the programs are from giants like, say, Microsoft or Adobe, but they're not from unknown fly-by-nights either.)

After terminating I'm asked whether to open the program "next time" in the sandbox or normally, but I have to choose "normally" twice (that is, run it and let avast terminate it again) before that choice sticks. Then it all happens again in another month or so.

This is very annoying. How can I tell avast to PERMANENTLY trust certain programs? Or failing that, is there a way to halt and cancel avast's (rather useless) countdown to termination. I feel this design is far too intrusive and simplistic, and I actually switched to avast because it was billed as being smarter than other AV programs in this respect.

Details: Avast Internet Security 7.0.1426 on a fairly new Windows 7 Pro 64-bit PC

[avast@@dvantage77.com]

I assume you are speaking of AutoSandbox.

1st step is to set AutoSandbox to ask.  Go to File System shield, expert settings, AutoSandbox, and change AutoSandbox mode to "ask".  Now when analysis is done, you are prompted to run normally, or in AutoSandBox.  Once you choose to run normally, then an exclusion is automatically entered for you so it will not occur again.

[DavidR]

What is the file name and location ?

I would suggest that you change the AutoSandbox mode to Ask (rather than Auto), this gives you greater interactive control, to have it run normally and 'remember your answer for this program.' You can manually add the file name and full path to the avastUI, Additional Protection, AutoSandbox, Settings, Files that will be excluded from automatic sandboxing: (see image example).

[mark99k]

Thanks to you both, J R Guthrie and DavidR. That looks like it'll do the trick.

[DavidR]

No problem, glad I could help.

Welcome to the forums.