Folding Forum

Norton 360 4.0 has accidentally detected the Folding at Home FahCore_a3.exe as a virus on my computer.

I had just installed Norton 360 4.0 (I have been running 3.0 for the last 9 Months) and the FAH Client was running.

About 12 Hrs later according to HFM-NET my SMP client (Which is installed as a windows vista service) had hung so I went into ''Services" and restarted the Folding@home-CPU-[1] service.
Immediately Norton SONAR detected FahCore_a3.exe and said it was a virus. The core after being removed by Norton,was re-downloaded by the client. Then Norton went after it again. This repeated until I disabled Norton and created a security exception.

Has this happened to anyone alse? Does anyone know what happened?

I guess the time has come to get yourself a decent antivirus

Or to configure Norton to exclude FAH folder from its scanner.

toTOW wrote:I guess the time has come to get yourself a decent antivirus

Or to configure Norton to exclude FAH folder from its scanner.

I have already made a "Security Exception" in Norton 360's settings. So Norton will hopefully leave F@H alone now.

Norton is a good product, always gets top ratings, and isn't a resource hog any more like in years past. The 360 version just happens to have the most agressive settings of the bunch. Not necessarily a bad thing in today's virus riddled internet.

That said, we try to remain impartial about recommending products, software, etc. This is a non-commercial forum.

There are plenty of websites that review products like this, and the top performers all work with fah. False positives are rare, but not uncommon.

7im wrote:Norton is a good product, always gets top ratings, and isn't a resource hog any more like in years past. The 360 version just happens to have the most agressive settings of the bunch. Not necessarily a bad thing in today's virus riddled internet.

That said, we try to remain impartial about recommending products, software, etc. This is a non-commercial forum.

There are plenty of websites that review products like this, and the top performers all work with fah. False positives are rare, but not uncommon.

Ok, I have removed the line asking what Anti virus I should use.

FahCore_a3 is getting picked up by Norton AntiVirus' "Sonar" feature. Everytime it tries to get a new work order, the "Sonar" prevents it from doing so. Says soemthing about how the file is "acting suspiciously". Not only did I lose about 8 hours of work because of this annoying feature, but it also retried to get a job like 6 or 7 times before I finally figured out how to turn the sonar feature off.

I'm hoping that it didn't count as 6 failed SMP jobs, as it'll take a LONG time for a newbie like me to get over 80% success if they counted.

I saw that there is another post about this issue, so in order to avoid making this a duplicate post, can we ignore the whole "issue with Norton" part, and just address if anyone knows whether those 6-7 failed attempts are going to count towards my 80% success rate required for bonus points?

Maybe a Mod can merge the two threads.
Mod-Edit: Done

If they're failed attempts of the same WU, it probably only counts once. If they're different WUs, the probably all count.

codysluder wrote:Maybe a Mod can merge the two threads.

If they're failed attempts of the same WU, it probably only counts once. If they're different WUs, the probably all count.

It was a different unit, because I WAS at 35% complete, and after the whole thing went down, I was back at 0%.

I'm thoroughly disgusted now.

Express your disgust directly to Norton for being overly agressive and not warning you in advance of the action it decided to take.

codysluder wrote:Express your disgust directly to Norton for being overly agressive and not warning you in advance of the action it decided to take.

Seriously. Don't even ASK? What IS that?!

You can keep SONAR on but you have to make a "Real time Protection Exception"
It is under "Settings" then "Antivirus" then "Scans and Risks" then finally "Scan Exclusions" just add the FAH folders to both lists (The folder that contains the core)
and poof! no more of Norton deleting my 80% complete WU

Num1cubfn wrote:

codysluder wrote:Express your disgust directly to Norton for being overly agressive and not warning you in advance of the action it decided to take.

Seriously. Don't even ASK? What IS that?!

That is the defualt setting. And ultimately, you are responsible for how the software on your computer is configured. If you don't like it, change it.

Thanks for posting this. I had the same problem which was expeditiously resolved following your recommendation.

It's not actually a virus but a similar extension of a virus. You don't need to wonder because it is not a virus. Update your antivirus so it will not detect again.