At least not on my new rig.

Built it Friday and started installing all my software yesterday. It was then I noticed a fun error start to crop up.

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access this item."

Always with an exe, but for some reason, not all of them. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to what it will and won't open either. This is definitely JUST the new rig though, because my laptop has zero trouble opening any of the files in question. Ditto for my previous rig the new one is replacing.

With some of these files I'm also getting the following Alert from AVG saying they're infected with, "psw.generic5.afkc". Of course, on any other computer running AVG, this alert never even surfaces. Scanning reveals no problem.

Unsurprisingly, AVG's support page can't tell me what the hell it is aside from a trojan that steals passwords.

Some googling hasn't turned up much either. Searching for the trojan in question yields people finding it in warez (and for the record, this problem is happening on perfectly legit files) but nothing useful. Searching for the error Windows is kicking back yields a bit more. Seems to be a common Vista message (I'd expect it there, Vista is heavy on the permissions). Some people have pinned it on IE 7, and disabling some enhanced security thing has cured it. I've seen it listed as a problem with running things over a network (which is not happening here). I've seen it as a problem with Server 2003.

Regardless of where it was cropping up, I tried most of the solutions I found that seemed applicable in any way. Nothing worked. Then I read about one person pinning this problem on AVG. I kept looking, saving it's uninstallation as a last resort, found nothing better, and ripped it off the system.

Everything worked again.

I reinstalled AVG.

The same exes that were kicking back errors are doing it again.

Anyone have a clue what the hell is going on here? The LAST thing I want to do is go looking for another antivirus program I'll like, and while reformatting and starting over is certainly not out of the question at this point (all I've done is install all my programs) it'd sure as hell be bloody annoying.

avg is rubbish why are you using it

Because it's free. Because it hasn't failed me (except for right now).

Sounds like something is wrong with UAC...

Only this is XP Pro and not Vista.

AVG has been crapping out on me as of late too, on both my XP and Vista machines. On my XP machine, it has problems auto updating and then it practically brings my computer to a halt when it scans (I have it set to do it early in the morning, but it can take up to 3 hours to scan) and on my Vista machine it keeps popping up on a background window and minimizing whatever I'm doing at the moment... very annoying, but until I find something that can replace it I'm stuck :(.

kaspersky ftw

Run it in admin, vista is crotchity about file protection, i have to run winrar in admin or i cant replace things.

Just kidding I was testing you you passed good job.

"We are pleased that you made it through the final challenge where we pretended we were going to murder you." =P

To be fair though I never said that anywhere in the original post.



First, see above. It's XP, not Vista. You fail. Second, don't even try to help me, as virtually everything you know about computers is 99.999% completely wrong or worthless.

Well then, aren't we all smiles tonight.

to give TE the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he was trying to help stormtrooper and not phoenix.

You said this is a clean install, but what if you actually are infected with whatever trojan/virus it says you have? Did you trial another AV and see what they picked up? NOD32 (easily the best) has a trial period with full functionality if you want to find out for sure.

Also, you said you aren't running Vista, but do you have a separate partition with it? Vista has been known to bomb the permissions of other drives for XP before.

Finally, I'd go rooting through AVG's options and see if anything stands out. Maybe try turning off heuristics too.

Point taken.



It's a theory I won't completely discount. Last time I formatted I contracted some nasty little worm while I was in the middle of updating Windows. Irony at it's finest. But like I said, it's kicking this error up on exes with seemingly no pattern. Doesn't make sense. Regardless, it's worth a shot to try something else and scan the system

No separate partitions. I'm clean of Vista. I'm going to stay behind the curve as long as I can on this one. I have a copy, but the few experiences I've had with it were not pleasant. Especially when it came to sharing an external drive between Vista and XP (Vista essentially ****ed up the drive so XP couldn't read it anymore, and trying to fix it screwed it up so Vista couldn't read it either.). All that is neither here nor there though, point is, I don't have Vista installed.

I've compared AVG's options between my laptop and desktop. At least the options I can find. They seem to be scarce. Nothing looked obvious. I'll try turning off the heuristics when I get back home.

Avast.com

Well, actually, Vista (at least mine) automatically runs anti-virus programs as administrator, so he was wrong anyway.


Is Avast any good? Last time I heard it was still a few levels below AVG, but that was awhile ago.

Personaly I love it. I've never gotten anything that it couldn't fix, it updates very often. I think it won some award not long ago. IMO it's always been better than AVG. AVG gave me lots of trouble back when I first used it.

Of course I'm sure all the gurus here could prove me wrong in 12 different ways, but I can only speak from my experience and my experience with AVG was bad while avast has been good.

So there ya go.

NOD32 pwns em both, if you have the cash :p

VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED :downs:

That's the extent of my knowledge of Avast. I already don't like it just because of that. AVG for me.

lol, you forgot the little *ding* that comes before that.
Yeah, that can be irritating from time to time. There may even be a way to turn it off, It's never bothered me enough to find out.

There is, but i leave it on just because.

Problem solved. Ran full system check with a few of those fun online scanners, then grabbed a trial of I forget which one and ran it. They all turned up jack squat. So in the interest of preserving my sanity and avoiding frustration, I decided not to reformat and attempt to make AVG work correctly. Instead I uninstalled it's *** and put in an order for Kaspersky. This after doing a little research to figure out which scanners were considered the best since all of them claim to have won awards on their main page, but don't give you any freaking dates. Awards are meaningless if they were won a year + ago. Either way, Kaspersky seemed like the best choice for me, and everything works now. End of story.