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While the Avast antivirus is one of the top consumer security solutions worldwide, it's far from perfect. There have been cases of the famous antivirus deleting .exe files or quarantining other false positives. Nonetheless, there's no reason to fear or be frustrated about it.
If you've experienced such antivirus behavior and were about to search online for something like "Avast deleted my .exe files," you can calm down, as we'll answer your questions. This guide will delve deeper into such antivirus behavior, show you how to recover files deleted by Avast, and teach you how to stop Avast from deleting a file.
Antivirus Deleting EXE Files - Is That Normal?
Yes, it's entirely normal for an antivirus to delete .exe files, and it happens in situations when these files are detected as harmful or malicious. Antivirus apps are designed to protect your device from malicious files, including viruses, malware, trojans, etc.
Suppose the antivirus app detects or categorizes a suspicious file as a virus or malware. In that case, the antivirus will either quarantine the file in the virus chest or remove it altogether to prevent the file from wreaking havoc on your operating system.
However, as no application is perfect, there can be situations in which an antivirus encounters a false positive. The app will then mistakenly categorize an .exe file as something malicious and delete it.
Nonetheless, companies behind these antivirus tools are constantly improving their apps and updating virus definitions, and the number of false positives and accidentally deleted data is decreasing. Of course, it can still happen, but it doesn't mean the end of the world.
Are the Files Deleted by Avast Lost Forever?
No, in most cases, they aren't lost forever and you can recover files deleted by Avast. More often than not, they're simply disabled, quarantined, or put in the Virus Chest to prevent them from making "dangerous" changes to your PC. That essentially means that these files can be recovered.
How To Recover Files Deleted by Avast
Now that we know more about Avast deleted files and have learned that they're recoverable, we can dive into the best ways to do that. There are multiple ways to restore such data, but the following five methods are among the top solutions for retrieving your files.
Way 1. Recover Deleted Files by Avast With Wondershare Recoverit
Just because Avast deleted your files doesn't mean they're gone forever. The problem is quickly resolvable with data recovery apps designed to recover deleted, inaccessible, and corrupted files, regardless of how it happens.
Wondershare Recoverit is one such app, and it's excellent for safely retrieving deleted data. It can recover deleted files in just a few steps, and the app can safely handle over 500 data loss situations, including accidentally deleted files, failed file transfers, files gone due to viruses and malware, formatted disk drives, and more.
All you need to do is follow the straightforward file recovery steps:
- Launch Wondershare Recoverit on your PC, select Hard Drives and Locations, and then click on a disk drive used to store your deleted files.
- The app will automatically start scanning your disk drive for lost data.
- The app will let you preview the discovered files, and you can check whether those are the files you're looking for and verify their integrity.
- When ready, you can pause or stop the scan and hit the Recover button to retrieve the discovered files to your PC.
Whether you've lost documents, music, photos, videos, or applications, Wondershare Recoverit has your back, as the app supports over 1,000 file types. It also works great with over 2,000 storage devices, including internal disk drives, external storage devices, NAS servers, USB drives, etc., making this app the top solution for any data loss situation.
Way 2. Use Virus Chest to Combat Antivirus Deleting .EXE Files
Another great way of restoring files deleted by Avast is by using the built-in Virus Chest tool. This data repository contains all the files the antivirus app classified as dangerous. In most cases, the files have been quarantined or removed from your device and put in the Virus Chest, and you'll need to follow these steps to get them back:
- Open the Avast antivirus by right-clicking the Avast icon in the bottom right corner of your taskbar.
- Navigate to Protection > Virus Chest.
- Locate the files that the Avast antivirus locked away in the Virus Chest. Then, click the Three Dot button and tap Restore.
If the files get flagged as dangerous and quarantined again, you'll need to repeat the process and choose the Restore and add exception option this time around.
Way 3. Recover Avast Deleted Files Using Windows Backup
Backups are an excellent way of restoring data when things go wrong, and fortunately for us, Windows has a decent built-in tool that can automatically back up your files. Setting it up is straightforward, and restoring data is just as easy. Here's how:
- Hit the Windows key and search for Control Panel.
- Navigate to System and Security and click on Backup and Restore (Windows 7).
- Choose the Restore my files option and follow the steps to restore your data.
Remember that the Windows Backup method will only work if you've previously set up Backup and Restore on your Windows machine. If you haven't set this up before, you won't find any created backups and should skip this method.
How To Stop Avast From Deleting a File
If Avast keeps creating false positives or deletes your files again after trying the Virus Chest method, you must change the app's settings. Preventing Avast from constantly quarantining files will require you to turn off the app's Real-Time Protection until you're done dealing with that particular file.
However, since Real-Time Protection is one of the core features of an antivirus app, this method is counterintuitive as it puts your system at risk. You'll need to combine the technique with antivirus exclusions right after you disable Real-Time Protection and then turn the protection back on. Here's how you can do that in Avast:
- Open the Avast antivirus app and navigate to Protection.
- Tap on Core Shields and turn off the four shields for a chosen period.
- Open Avast's Settings, head to General, and then find and click on Exclusions.
- Click on File Paths and then Browse. Then, navigate to the folder with the problematic .exe file. Add the file or the entire folder to exclusions.
- Enable Avast's Real-Time Protection again by enabling the four shields.
Since they're now on the exclusion list, the once-problematic files, whether those are .exe files or something else, should no longer cause problems. Avast won't flag them as dangerous or quarantine them again.
Conclusion
Although Avast is one of the best antivirus tools on the market, the app is known to create false positives and delete files sometimes, even if they're harmless. If you've been one of the unlucky few to experience this, you'll be pleased to learn that these files are most often recoverable, with multiple methods for doing so.
Files deleted by Avast often end up in the app's Virus Chest, from which you can quickly restore them in a few steps. And if that doesn't help, there are ways to undo recent system changes and restore previous versions of the OS through Windows Backup and System Restore points.
However, the best method for retrieving Avast-deleted files is undoubtedly through data recovery tools like Wondershare Recoverit, which makes this process a piece of cake.
