Known Bug in Avira Scanner

[sujay]

There is a known bug (?) in Avira scanner and I am not sure if everyone is aware of that. If you have selected highest settings for Avira scanner like highest heuristic, highest archive scanning and set it to scan all malware types, Avira will still follow the default settings in predefined scan. To have your settings in a scan you have to do either a right click scan or setup a manual scan profile.
http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&postID=814149

[JayCub]

I don't use Avira Sujay but it is well worth pointing out now, even if i switch to Avira it's something to be aware of and to check if there has been a fix...good reporting Sujay

[Jlelono]

There is a known bug (?) in Avira scanner and I am not sure if everyone is aware of that. If you have selected highest settings for Avira scanner like highest heuristic, highest archive scanning and set it to scan all malware types, Avira will still follow the default settings in predefined scan. To have your settings in a scan you have to do either a right click scan or setup a manual scan profile.
http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&postID=814149

It is not a bug Sujay. If you choose complete system scan then it uses only the default settings, that is why the reporting is still set to default. This has confused many users since the Complete System Scan sticks to the default settings and not the settings you set in the scanner configuration.

[noaccount]

ya this one is tricky

(...) Avira has always been this way. Never do a scan from the Overview/status page. Also, never do a scan from Local Protection/Scanner/Complete System Scan. These scans use Avira default settings. If you want to do a full scan with YOUR settings then you need to choose Manual Selection in the list. That will do a scan based on your settings.

from logs (on-demand) i dont think i ever stumbled into this

Jobname.............................: avguard_async_scan
Configuration file..................: C:\ProgramData\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\TEMP\AVGUARD_4d017e64\guard_slideup.avp
Logging.............................: low
Primary action......................: interactive
Secondary action....................: quarantine
Scan master boot sector.............: on
Scan boot sector....................: off
Process scan........................: on
Scan registry.......................: off
Search for rootkits.................: on
Integrity checking of system files..: off
Optimised scan......................: on
Scan all files......................: All files
Scan archives.......................: on
Recursion depth.....................: 20
Smart extensions....................: on
Macro heuristic.....................: on
File heuristic......................: high
Deviating risk categories...........: +APPL,+GAME,+JOKE,+PCK,+PFS,+SPR,

[sujay]

Hi Jlelono., yes it is an intentional bug..;-) Most other AV changes the settings when you change the configuration. So, it is a bit confusing. It took me about an year to see that full scan is not the deepest scan I want..

[noaccount]

full scan started from status page also uses custom settings so quoted info is not correct either

Configuration settings for the scan:
Jobname.............................: Complete system scan
Configuration file..................: C:\program files\avira\antivir desktop\sysscan.avp
Logging.............................: low
Primary action......................: interactive
Secondary action....................: ignore
Scan master boot sector.............: on
Scan boot sector....................: on
Boot sectors........................: C:, D:, E:,
Process scan........................: on
Extended process scan...............: on
Scan registry.......................: on
Search for rootkits.................: on
Integrity checking of system files..: off
Optimised scan......................: on
Scan all files......................: All files
Scan archives.......................: on
Recursion depth.....................: 20
Smart extensions....................: on
Macro heuristic.....................: on
File heuristic......................: medium
Deviating risk categories...........: +APPL,+GAME,+JOKE,+PCK,+PFS,+SPR,

sujay, can you reproduce it? does this affect only Premium and Suite editions? i'm on Free and i cant reproduce it.

[LunarWolf]

That is not a bug. If I am not mistaken, that only affect the free user. To get maximum heuristics,

Local protection > Scanner > Scan for active malwares/manual selection > C drive.

Make sure to set the heuristics to high before following the directions.

[Alboguy]

You can't say that's intentional sujay...in every software shows up a new bug time to time. And Jlehono may be right because look what one of the answers says:

There is no bug in Avira 9. Avira has always been this way. Never do a scan from the Overview/status page. Also, never do a scan from Local Protection/Scanner/Complete System Scan. These scans use Avira default settings. If you want to do a full scan with YOUR settings then you need to choose Manual Selection in the list. That will do a scan based on your settings.

We've had a number of discussions here about this problem because the GUI will forever indicate that you have never done a a complete scan when you are regularly scanning but you have chosen Manual Scan so your settings are in effect. It doesn't make sense to see that yellow exclamation point next to Last Complete System Scan on the Overview page and the claim that a full system scan has never performed if you are doing regular scans with your settings.

Avira needs to at least make it clearer to users that a scan from the Overview page or from Local Protection/Scanner/Complete System Scan will NOT use your settings. I think Avira should change it so that default settings for full scans are used ONLY if the user has not made changes to those settings. Obviously, users expect their settings to be used for a complete scan and it is not clear that this occurs only if Manual scan is chosen. I didn't know this for a long time when I got Avira because I never did a scan from the Overview page or a complete system scan from Local Protection/Scanner because I have two hard drives and I don't want Avira scanning my second drive so I have always used the Manual choice. On virtual machines, I have used the scan from the Overview page and that is how I learned that it does not honor user settings. Then this was confirmed in the forum by Avira personnel.

Hope they will release a patch to fix this issue or at least fix it in the next version.

[noaccount]

like i said, i'm using Free edition and i can't reproduce it. btw anyone notice [solved] tag in thread?

[sujay]

Sorry guys... Stupid me.. It has been fixed in v10... Actually I saw this bug in my friends PC who is still using v9. I am using v10 but didn't check if it has been fixed, always using the manual scanning profile...
Thank you noaccount...