Tip on using avast! anti virus and installing Process Lasso

[Mr. Bubbles]

Just a head's up for those folks using Avast anti-virus version 2015.10....  If you're experiencing problems installing / running Process Lasso, I found that if you're running avast! and have "enabled hardened mode" turned on, then problems will occur (at least on Windows XP Pro, SP3.  Specifically, the installer for Process Lasso will return errors and not work.  Or, if you do manage to have Process Lasso already installed, PL will randomly crash.  The solution is in Avast, Settings, remove the checkmark in "enable hardened mode" and then Process Lasso will install properly and work perfectly.   

[BenYeeHua]

Hmm, so Process Lasso is not on the list that avast! maintain?
(Except you are setting as Moderate but not Aggressive)

Hardened Mode is designed to make protection tougher without interfering with the computer usage much.
avast! by default checks suspicious files with DeepScreen within virtual environment to see how they behave. But if you use Hardened Mode, it starts to behave a bit differently.

Hardened Mode: Moderate
Under normal conditions, if avast! decides that some file is too suspicious by various characteristics, it then throws it into the DeepScren for further scanning. But if Moderate Hardened Mode is enabled, avast! automatically blocks files that are detected as suspicious by preliminary analysis.
In most cases DeepScreen checks the file and if it doesn't find obvious malicious problems with it, those files are started automatically after analysis. But Hardened Mode (Moderate) blocks it right there.

Hardened Mode: Aggressive
This mode behaves a bit differently. It actually relies on analysis on a very small scale and mostly relies on a huge whitelist database located in avast! Cloud. If file is located within the cloud and flagged as safe, it will allow to run it. If it's not found or marked as bad, it will block it. So, at least based on my experience, Aggressive Mode is actually much more secure and also a lot less intrusive. Only time that it will cause problems is with some very rare old software or very very new software that isn't used by thousands of users. Usually some very specialized programs used by only few users.
Moderate mode often feels a bit too paranoid (despite its name) because it often blocks safe programs just because they exhibit local suspicious file characteristics that are basically ignored by the Aggressive mode.

https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=142172.0

[Mr. Bubbles]

I set my avast at "aggressive" for the "Hardened Mode" when it caused Process Lasso to not install properly.  As soon as I turned Hardened Mode off, then Process Lasso installed properly and worked normally.  Yes, I suspect that Process Lasso / Bitsum software is not in the avast whitelist for the Hardened Mode.  That is something that avast should do!    I just posted to the avast forum to ask for it to be whitelisted... we shall see....

[Jeremy Collake]

Thanks for this! I was not aware of this problem.

Let me see if I can find an Avast contact.