I have Avast Free antivirus installed on Windows 7.
I just noticed that Windows Action Center (the white flag icon in task bar) warns me about activating Avast antivirus, and even if I click activate it will just continue to ask for that.
But Avast reports being OK. I didn't turn off antivirus when I installed all my software since last format a couple of weeks ago, and I'm behind a NAT.
The only thing that makes me a little worried is that yesterday I used a "SKIDROW" (no further comments on that) installer, but that application is popular and months and months old, so Avast team would have had the time to add it to dangerous software if it was so. I understand I granted UAC permission, but I find hard to believe I could have been infected, even if I recently read that SKIDROW himself (again, no comment) placed a Trojan forged with Themida in a more and more popular patch.
My question is:
Is it normal that Windows says Avast is not running? Avast behaves normally. I even downloaded a virus from eMule (zipped, of course, so I wouldn't be running it) and had Avast scan it, and it found the threat!!
Could there be a relationship with yesterday's installation? Wouldn't Avast detect an exploitation attempt? I set its heuristics to a higher level, so it would have detected attempts to overwrite its files, system files, boot sector, startup programs, etc… (it even complained about Office 2010 installation)
Best Answer
Reinstalling Avast tends to fix this issue. I've seen it before where it happened after an AVAST update.
As for AVs in general. They are not an invincible shell. They are more like a bulletproof vest. They stop some fatal shots but not all; you still have to avoid firefights.
You should probably check your computer with standalone tools such as Malware Bytes.