Adware alert

[UiNeill]

Ok, tonight when loading Win im getting an 'adware/malware' alert and can't get online. Ive uninstalled everything but when I try to reinstall WinMX im getting the same warning. Any ideas why this is happening?

[Bearded Blunder]

Whatever anti virus/malware software you are using appears to be giving a false positive, there should be an option to make it ignore winmx.

[UiNeill]

Whatever anti virus/malware software you are using appears to be giving a false positive, there should be an option to make it ignore winmx.

  Well yes could be, i'll try your suggestion, just seems funny it happening now, cheers

[Bearded Blunder]

it would appear that a certain group have been submitting the patch to various companies in an effort to get it listed as malware, a deliberate campaign to try to make patch use difficult & force ppl into using sucky winmx running under a modified hosts file & allowing flooding...

[KM]

it can sometimes be due to the settings.dat file that winmx saves its settings in, that file is encrypted and basically the contents change every time winmx is run

antivirus software works by looking for a small sequence of data in a file (rather than checking the entire file for a known virus, it just checks a tiny part for a small match) - this causes false positives quite often (like when several AV programs added a signature that is found in hundreds of thousands of installers to their virus lists...)

combine the 2, and every now and then the settings file happens to contain a series of bytes that an AV has down as "oh no that's <insert name of random virus> evil delete delete block block" - of course any half sensible AV would notice that it is a .dat file and therefore can not run, so therefore can not contain a virus... but then again if it was sensible then it would know the difference between a virus and an extremely common installer used by hundreds of thousands of programs

that is the most common problem, normally though AV will simply delete/remove the settings file and the next time winmx is run it will go through the setup wizard again

As Bearded said though a certain group have submitted hundreds of reports to various AV companies under hundreds of fake names to try and trick them in to blocking it - however so far this does not appear to have worked and I am not aware of any confirmed incidents of an AV saying the patch is a virus (excluding that incident with hundreds of thousands of installers being labeled viruses... that also applied to the winmxgroup installer, although an installer was quickly updated to not be detected as a virus while waiting for the AV companies to release another update resolving the problem)

[Nathan]

Any thoughts on how I can stop AVAST 4 Home Edition from foiling my attempts to even install WinMx again after it deleted it?

[Bearded Blunder]

If it's like most AV you should be able to set it to ask you what to do about detected "threats" rather than taking autonomous action, this should
a) enable you to install
b) give you chance to find where there are options to either ignore a given "threat" or configure a folder (winmx program folder) which should be omitted from scans.

Unfortunately I can't give you specific instructions for this AV software, it's not one I've used, but they all have very similar options, just how you access & configure them differs.

[Nathan]

I got it sorted

[madkatz1]

I'm getting the Adware/malware notice, too. Avast suggests moving the threat to 'the chest'... I did that and now WMix.exe cannot be located and I can't get on.
A week ago everything worked perfectly, great dl's, plenty of search results. The only thing I have done since then was dl Internet Explorer 7.... It changed all my settings (Incoming TCP, In/Out UDP were all blank!) I restored my 'puter to an earlier date, when there were no problems. The same malware notice crap still comes on!
Should I reinstall WMix 3.53? What about the MX Pie Patch 3.2... leave it alone???? Where's the 'Magic Formula' to fix this mess? Thanks in advance to any constructive advice/solution. You guys/gals are the BEST!

[SamSeeSam]

https://www.winmxgroup.com/Install-3.0-MultiVer.exe
Go there and select your version of winmx to install
That should then be fine I think....

Cheers

[Bearded Blunder]

you need to find the option to stop avast giving this false positive, having done so, the installer sam pointed you to will fix you up

[madkatz1]

I'm very happy... I disabled Avast completely (not comfortable doing that)... went to
https://www.winmxgroup.com/Install-3.0-MultiVer.exe
and selected my version, dl-ed it and WMix started up perfectly. (Never touched the patch!)
After I was on WMix, I re-started my Avast protection and everything seems to be working A.O.K.
I hope this helps... I know when I started this I was clueless. Thanks to all of you who work your techy stuff to keep this great program alive.
WinMX Rocks! (Where's your donation box?)

[Me Here]

I've mentioned this in another thread as well but seems worth a few lines here..

If a file alert comes up you know is not a virus, such as the WinMX.exe or Settings.dat or any file..

When the report comes first make note of the exact file name, then simply close the box with the 'X' up top right, this will cause Avast to take No action.. then right click your Avast Icon in the task tray, select Program Settings..  Then in the list on the right choose Exclusions.  Now you see an option to browse to the file in question, usually C:\Program Files\WinMX folder...
Select the file to protect, Click Apply and OK.. and be done with it ..

[SamSeeSam]

(Where's your donation box?)

You can search the site all you want and you'll never find any donation box. Anything and everything here is free.

Although, if you are hell bent on donating you can waste as much money on me as you want :twisted:

Cheers

[KM]

looking on the avast forus it appears that they did an update that killed a lot of software (radmin, vnc, mouse drivers, etc) - so it wasn't just limited to winmx

apparently the latest update fixes all those false positives, but winmx isn't mentioned specifically - with luck they have updated the detection rule that was triggering them all and it's solved and not just excluded mentioned programs

[Nathan]

IMPORTANT: The latest Avast File Set 0645-3 has sorted the problem out...I tried a WinMx install with Avast running with this file set a few minutes ago on a secondary PC and without any exclusions and AVAST stayed silent and allowed it all to go ahead, I have removed the exclusions from AVAST on my machine and its OK...problem solved...I think/hope...for the moment anyway

[Me Here]

Glad to hear they have this sorted out.. and its great to know so many folks use Avast, until this issue I have used it for years with no problems..