Just got off an hour long dial in support session.
None of my Xojo-written apps (3 different ones) would start on a user’s machine.
In the end, I found a setting in their Avast virus checker called something like ‘Avast Reputation Services’
Ticked: no startup
Unticked: works just fine. despite Avast scanning and showing ‘no threat detected’
And code signed.
Just throwing this out there in case it happens to anyone else.
Anyone know how I can moan at Avast?
Sharing your pain - welcome to the club. We have two other VS-compiled apps that are also flagged by the AVAST “tool”. We’ve filled out their web forms and had our customers submit reports, but nothing’s changed in 2+ years.
A number of our customers have dropped AVAST and moved to McAfee since they had other apps that were being blocked with no explanation.
I dropped Avast a while ago. I went for F-Secure for several years, and more recently, have gone with Eset Nod32. Neither F-Secure or Eset Nod32 ever prevented me to use Xojo.
Along with false-flagging Xojo programs, Avast was recently responsible for task bar and start bar issues on Windows 10, the recommendation is to remove AVAST and use another virus checker. I am using AVG and have not had any issues in the last couple of months.
A lot of vendors use some form of reputation system
Symantec & McAfee for sure
Dunno about others
I second the Eset Nod32 choice. It can be easily configured to allow web apps to run in debug mode. It is always somewhere near the top in any benchmark. I tried many different products, free or paid. Nod32 has been my choice for a few years.
I don’t need a new virus checker.
I just need Avast to offer users the choice instead of blocking apps unilaterally,
That’s like me being able to stop Brian Smith in Winsconsin from driving in the car he paid for because I’ve never heard of him.
Have fun 
@Jeff Tullin - unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to resolve this issue with AVAST. Our statement to our customers is as follows:
“For Windows product users, we have had reports of the AVAST® anti-virus software blocking many of our Windows products (among others). Attempts have been made to resolve the issue with AVAST with no luck. Our only recommendation is to either disable the AVAST Reputation checking on your system or utilize another anti-virus tool. There is nothing that we can do in our software to change or resolve this issue.”
I had 5 pc’s with Avast and my contract should last more than a year or so. Because of the constant arising problems with Avast i have removed it from all my pc’s.
Now I am using Spybot S&D since a few months and had no problems anymore and it’s way cheaper than Avast.
Turning off ‘Avast Reputation Services’ seems to work for running programs in the IDE. Haven’t produced any apps for deployment yet.
personally I use probably the best anti-virus software I could find … OSX
sorry… couldn’t resist 
[quote=271474:@Dave S]personally I use probably the best anti-virus software I could find … OSX
sorry… couldn’t resist :)[/quote]
Don’t be so confident. There has been cases of worms and malware in OS X. Much less frequent, but they do exist. Viruses are only one kind of pest.
I said “best”, I did not say “virus proof”… and so far to the best of my knowledge any/all virus that have been detected on OSX have either been “conceptual” (ie. never found in the wild), or limited to a small population with specific other apps or habits…
You should report your problems to Avast, however do not expect they are gonna solve your problem. We have the same problem sometimes with Avast because of the African roots we show (Botswana). Totally legal websites are blocked by Avast because… they are located in Africa which seems enough to be blocked.
It is a sad story but that is reality.
Take into account that your valid application still can cause a false negative while the enduser is not aware of it. Scan your application thouroughly before releasing it and make sure you announce the Avast problem without having the user to install anything (telling before the install).
It is a serious nuisance I admit, but a necessary one because there are so many harmfull threads flying around. Even we do respect that, despite the fact we are heavily affected. For that reason we have domains but never used them because they get falsely blocked because these are african domains.
The best solution with Avast is to remove it. I switched to Nod32 and it does not bother me when I want to run in the IDE.
I consistently get my apps flagged by Avast. I generally package my Windows apps using Turbo Studio (bundles all the xojo and windows framework dll’s all into the exe and uses a virtual filesystem), and Avast freaks out every time.
For every app that I write, I include this on its page, with a link to an explanation of this very issue.
I used to recommend Avast on my radio show. Now I wish it a fiery death.
I had to move away from (paid for) Avast. By the end of my time with it, Avast would slow my PC down to a crawl 3 or 4 times a day with no obvious check going on (and certainly nothing scheduled).
I just couldn’t get to the bottom of it at all. Support just recommended reinstalling Windows, after the initial “Hmm, you’re the first person to report this”, “No I’m not there’s hundreds of reports on the web” dance.
Moved to Bit Defender and have had no issues since. No idea how they compare for protection, but reports on the web seemed favourable.
The thing with viruses and generally malware is like antibiotics : better avoid getting sick with profilaxy. A good hygiene should be the first line of defence :
[quote=271553:@Michel Bujardet]The thing with viruses and generally malware is like antibiotics : better avoid getting sick with profilaxy. A good hygiene should be the first line of defence :
Sorry, but I can not agree 100%. This might be part of a good defense, but cannot be the whole solution. On modern computer systems you need a working antivirus. You just need to go to a website with an unpatched Wordpress installation to get your computer infected with the worst malware…