"Just" a virus or should malware/spyware have detected this?

Discussion in 'Software' started by scotty_1911, Jan 6, 2012.

  1. scotty_1911

    scotty_1911 Private E-2

    Hi all,

    I used AVG for the longest time, then Comodo Firewall and AV for about 2 years without issues. The recent updates seem to nag a bit more to upgrade from the free version, though. However, after reading on here, I went with Avira (free, for now) on a new XP refresh and it has popup alerts to upgrade but it's been top notch and not bogging my system down. I have a test file, however, that I'm not sure if a spyware or malware program is supposed to pickup or not. Avira caught it instantly, but I scanned the directory with that infected file with MAM, IOBit Malware, Super AntiSpyware, and Spyware Blaster and they all said there were no infected files in the directory. I did just the folder it was in, and a full computer scan. Plus, tried it scanning from a DVD disc as well as from the hard drive. I am not a rock star when it comes to removing this stuff because I'm a fairly safe web surfer (I'm enjoying the WOT Firefox extension recommended here, though...that was new to me!), but I guess there's a difference between viruses and spyware/malware and only one type of software would protect/detect against that type...I think?

    This is what Avira found, but none of the spyware/malware programs I scanned with to test them detected it (with on-demand scanning):

    Is this technically "just" a virus?
     
  2. plodr

    plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member

    Go here http://www.virustotal.com/
    and click upload a file. It will scan with about 21 different programs. If Avira is the only one that finds something, consider it clean and set Avira to ignore this file. It is probably a false positive.
     

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