Antivirus Programs

Real-time virus scanning and data updates

Many Antivirus programs operate constantly in the background checking any files that you work with. This is called “real-time” virus scanning. When you install an AV program, there is a good chance that real-time scanning is enabled automatically.

The trouble with real-time scanning is that you may be “working” with a very large number of files all at once – for example, when you do a data update. In this situation, real-time virus scanning may slow the update enormously, as there are thousands of small files that need to be opened so that the latest data can be appended to each one.

If you find that your data updates are going very slowly, it may be that real-time virus scanning is the cause. If you wish to retain real-time virus scanning, one option you have is to configure your AV program to exclude your data files from real-time scanning.

There are two ways you can do this -

1. exclude the folder where the data files are kept – e.g. exclude “c:\Trading Data”
2. exclude the data files themselves irrespective of where they are kept – i.e. exclude *.dat and *.mwd files (all files with these extensions).

Heuristic Virus Detection

Heuristic virus protection involves the antivirus program "guessing" that it has detected malware of some kind (without reference to any known malware signature). We have found that heuristic scan engines can interfere with our program upgrades by intercepting the new program executable as soon as it is downloaded. For instance, Norton Antivirus may report that it has detected and quarantined "Suspicious.Cloud.5" - DataUpdater.exe.

If your Antivirus or Anti-Spyware program quarantines any of our program executables (DataUpdater.exe, DataTools.exe or FX2.exe) please submit the file in question to your security program vendor so that "false positives" may be avoided in the future.

Antivirus program prevents updating program from even opening

Users of “BitDefender 2009” have reported that when they click on the short-cut icon to our “Premium Data” updating program for Stocks, nothing happens. Similarly, for the short-cut icon to our “Premium Charts” program.

In such a case, the AV program needs to be told not to interfere with the program in question (you need to exclude the executable program file from any sort of scanning). For BitDefender 2009, the procedure is as follows –

1. Open BitDefender Total Security 2009.
2. Change from Basic View to Advanced View by clicking on Switch to Advanced View in top right corner.
3. Click on Scanner settings button to open the Behavioural Scanner settings window.
4. Find the Exclude Applications window.
5. Click on the + button
6. Enter C:\Trading Applications\bin\PC2.exe or browse for file.
7. Enter C:\Trading Applications\bin\DataUpdatee.exe or browse for file.

The table below shows the names of the executable program files for our various programs and where they should be found (assuming a default installation) -

Norton Antivirus

Users who have upgraded to the 2010 version of Norton AntiVirus have reported a variety of issues. For instance, when they go to do a data update with “Premium Data”, the program reports –

“Could not find the configuration database. This is required module .... etc”.

As far as we can tell, Norton 2010 appears to be interfering with some versions of the file “Sqlite3.dll” (we don’t know why, because this is a file used by any number of legitimate applications).

So far, we have managed to work around this problem by providing affected users with an alternate version of the file (version 7.7.8.1). There is a link to this alternate version below. Please download the file and save it to the “bin” folder where your updating program is installed (with a default installation, this will be – c:\Trading Applications\bin).

Download the new sqlite3.dll here and then try to do an update. If the updating program gives you an error message, just click “O.K.” to continue.

avast! Antivirus

avast! Free Antivirus 6 includes a feature called AutoSandbox that "Prompts users to run suspicious applications in the virtual Sandbox environment". This is meant to protect your computer from the impact of unknown/risky software. Each of our updating programs needs to be able to write to the database files that reside on the hard drive - running them in a Sandbox program will not allow this to happen. Updates will appear to be successful, however the underlying database will not contain any new data once the sandbox has been closed.

You can find information on adding exceptions or disabling the AutoSandbox on the avast website.