Whilst aware that NPE is a more aggressive tool I have on occasion used it to try to be as ultra sure as I can be that there are no lurking infections after doing the conventional scans with Norton Security as the administrator (which check out fine) as a prelude to doing a system image. The idea being that I know that at the time of the back up everything is supposedly clean and healthy at a point to go back to should there be future problems short of using factory recovery to start totally from scratch again. Every time before I have asked NPE to scan for risks it has reported no issues'
So imagine my surprise at this:And thisWhen Googling this I seen discussion of this exact very issue as being a possible (If not actual) example of a "false positive". Is it though a false positive as opposed to a true positive and if it is a false positive why start picking on legitimate Microsoft files? Everything else checks out OK including the integrity of the system files so is this something NPE has detected as a non existent problem that Symantec should be trying to refine NPE as something to ignore?
HI SoulAsylum. Acting on your recommendation I downloaded and installed Malwarebytes and alongside the scans from NIS it reports (at this point in time anyway) that my system remains as clean as a whistle
So thanks for your help and advice and that from the others as well
Hello Securitysceptic. Per this Microsoft thread the NPE detection is indeed a false positive unless you have an intruder already present on your system. Deleting the registry entry will result in its recreation upon the next system restart. I would download and run Malwarebytes to get a second opinion, if it detects nothing it would be safe to say your system is clean.
NPE does not detect malware (that is what Norton Security is for), it presents you with a list of files that could be malware. It is meant to be run when your Norton program does not detect anything malicious but you still suspect that something may be acting suspiciously on your PC. If there doesn't appear to be anything wrong, the results returned by NPE will almost always be safe files that belong to applications on your system. NPE doesn't tell you much about a file because it really doesn't know much about the files it presents - that's the whole point, if Norton knew whether the file was actually malicious or not you would not have to run NPE, as Norton Security would catch it if it was malicious and NPE would not flag it if it was a known good file.
Norton Power Eraser uses our most aggressive scanning technology to eliminate threats that traditional virus scanning doesn’t always detect, so you can get your PC back. Because Norton Power Eraser is an aggressive virus removal tool, it may mark a legitimate program for removal.
And this
When Googling this I seen discussion of this exact very issue as being a possible (If not actual) example of a "false positive". Is it though a false positive as opposed to a true positive and if it is a false positive why start picking on legitimate Microsoft files? Everything else checks out OK including the integrity of the system files so is this something NPE has detected as a non existent problem that Symantec should be trying to refine NPE as something to ignore?