Ultim, I'm a big fan of Tinywall; thank you for all of your excellent work. I use Tinywall on multiple machines on multiple networks. I experienced the following issue on 2 machines, both on the same network (and both comprising 100% of the windows machines on this network) at the same time: 2015-01-12: Avast Antivirus pops up a message noting - http://i58.tinypic.com/eukq5f.png " Avast File System Shield has blocked a threat. No further action is required. Object: C:\Program Files\TinyWall\Tinywall.exe … Action: Deleted … The threat was detected and blocked just before the file was opened. " Thus Avast detected TinyWall as threat, and deleted the TinyWall .exe. I am unable to restore the .exe from Avast’s virus chest, because nothing exists in the virus chest; Avast apparently did delete the Tinywall.exe file. 2015-01-13 (i.e., 1 day later): Avast pops up a message noting - http://i60.tinypic.com/6t2wxs.png As part of my subsequent troubleshooting I receive the following error when I attempt to either: - uninstall TinyWall, or - reinstall TinyWall http://i62.tinypic.com/9biq2x.png " There is a problem with this Windows Installer package, A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor " I then restored to a restore point 3 days ago (on 2015-01-09); this did not resolve the issue. I thus believe that recent Avast Antivirus definitions updates may be related to the TinyWall removal. The question is, was the tinywall.exe on both machines really infected? I don’t know. I have already added Exclusions on in Avast for [PATH]\TinyWall.exe on both of my problematic machines, so that once I resolve this issue, the issue should not recur. Thus I am currently stuck with 2 machines where Avast deleted TinyWall.exe, but I cannot uninstall or re-install TinyWall. What next steps should I perform – e.g., - upload some sort of logs here for troubleshooting purposes? - (if I can) find another machine to install TinyWall on, then install it, and then copy the TinyWall.exe over to my 2 problematic machines? - use a different uninstaller (e.g., Revo, Zsoft) to uninstall Tinywall? [not my preferred route] - restore my problematic machines to a known-good system image [not my preferred route] Thanks in advance for your help -Bill
Should be enough to restore Tinywall.exe from AVAST quarantine and exclude the file from further detections. Report the false positive to AVAST.
This may be a false positive from Avast. Anyway, from what I remember, TinyWall installs itself as a Windows service. 1. To manually uninstall a Windows service run services.msc and locate the entry for the TinyWall service and double click on it to open the service properties dialog. Check the Service name. 2. Run a cmd window window with administrative privileges and execute: sc.exe stop ServiceName sc.exe delete ServiceName 3. Delete the TinyWall installation folder. 4. Additionally, you can run regedit.exe and navigate to the following key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall and check for the key used by TinyWall and delete it too. Now, you should be able to reinstall the software.
I am sorry for you BillBixby, but my system is fine. To be sure of all I updated the latest Windows updates finally. I usually wait at least a week. I also installed the latest MS.NET. Framework 4.5.2 that was optional. Rebooted and did an Avast smart scan. Usually I don't scan my machine at all and the AV is just a secondary view for my internet protection. But nothing found also this time. I have used Avast in my computer active all the time. Perhaps some false positive maybe in your case. Could be also some memory malware involved that this rasheedxx guy is so interested? I usually shut down my computer instead restart, for just to try be sure Also I have not experienced any UAC popups in my computer running my computer as Siri reported in another thread. TinyWall works just fine. Usually with memory malware, even if AppGuard maybe is not exactly able to resist, I can see from the icon blinking that something is not maybe right in my sandboxied browsers running. I usually then shut down all the sandboxes or if more paranoid, shut down my computer and restart. I truly suspect some malware exploit was involved in your case. But could have been also just some Avast AV database update that missed the false positive in my case.
Unfortunately, I am able to reproduce Avast's false positive concerning TinyWall. I have submitted a false positive report to Avast, and I ask anyone who is affected by this issue to do the same. I also sent them a support request and am hoping for a fast resolution. I can reassure everybody that TinyWall is free of malware, and respects its users' privacy. I make sure that each and every TinyWall installer file can be verified to have been issued by my real person (and can be traced to my real name and address) by including a valid authenticode certificate, so distributing malware using TinyWall is not really in my best interest, to say the least.
If you'd like to uninstall TinyWall until Avast corrects their database, here are the recommended steps. Unfortunately, you do need an existing TinyWall.exe to finish any procedure using its default installer, so these steps assume you were able to recover TinyWall.exe (either from the quarantine, or from installing it on another computer and then copying the file). 1. First, make sure the Windows Firewall Service is running (I mean Windows's, not Tinywall's). If it isn't running or cannot be started, you must fix this first. 2. Add an exclusion for TinyWall in Avast, or disable disable Avast temporarily (you can enable it again after uninstalling TinyWall) 3. Remove everything about TinyWall from the quarantine (if in there). 4. Run TinyWall.exe by hand once. It will probably give you a UAC prompt, allow it. 5. At this point TinyWall should be running and usable. 6. You should now be able to cleanly uninstall TinyWall from the Control Panel. 7. After uninstalling TinyWall, you can re-enable Avast's protection if you disabled it in step 2.
Thank you so much to everyone for your constructive suggestions. I appreciate your volunteer work, as always, to try to help out users such as myself in difficult scenarios. I will utilize the suggestions noted here to move forward, and will let you that path I choose and the related results. FYI, one of the most frustrating aspects of my experience is that literally no objects exist in my Avast virus chest (as per my initial post in this thread), thus I am unable to restore TinyWall.exe from virus chest/quarantine. Possible reasons for this are covered in the following Avast Knowledge base article: https://www.avast.com/faq.php?article=AVKB21 .
Concerning the false positive about TinyWall, another user was kind enough to let me know about the answer he received from one of Avast's virus analysts': "it will be fixed in next VPS."
Great news. I will proceed with your instructions, ultim, once I have access to another machine that I can install TinyWall on. I wonder why the TinyWall.exe is not in my avast virus chest; given the information in the avast KB article I posted previously, what is the file size of TinyWall.exe?
Hi, I just registered to be able to respond to this topic. I have the exact same problem as the original poster. I don't know when this first occurred, but I only just noticed just now that Tinywall.exe has been deleted, and I cannot reinstall it because of the error message: "There is a problem with this Windows Installer package, A program required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor." BillBixby, were you able to fix this issue? If so would you mind letting me know what steps to take? I really like Tinywall, and I hope to get it up and running again as soon as possible. Kind regards, Chris
Hi Chris, Please read my post #7 in this same thread which tells you what to do. After that, when Avast has fixed their VPS, you will be able to safely reinstall TinyWall.
