Avast Misidentifies Steam As A Trojan
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Are you having troubles getting Steam to boot up today? If so, the problem might not be with Valve's blockbuster gaming service; the issue could be your antivirus, instead. This weekend, the freebie Avast! antivirus misidentified a Steam component as a nasty little Trojan and sent the executable to the time-out box known as Quarantine as a result. The problem: SteamService.exe was a totally clean file, and Steam won't run without it.
Fortunately, the muck-up only lasted about an hour and a half, according to The Register. Avast! yanked the bonked definition around 90 minutes after it went live. While the goof shouldn't have happened in the first place, kudos to Avast! for fixing so quickly, and on the weekend to boot.
If you were affected, restoring the file from Quarantine might get Steam up and running again. However, several Steam users needed to reinstall the service, resubmit their verification code and reboot their PC to get Steam working normally again, and many warn that installing SteamService.exe again can be a lengthy process.
Where you affected by Avast's false positive? How easy was it for you to get Steam up and running again?
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tugboat_2
February 07, 2012 at 12:00am
As long as you have a decent internet connection, (IMHO) Steam is one of greatest things since sliced bread.
I really don't see where you would have any real problem it your Stamp client was damaged. Except for non-Steam games, steam keeps uptodate copies of all your games for redownload any time at no charge.
Assuming your steam files were not lost, just copy your games and any userdata files from the C drive Steam program files for safety. Then uninstall and reinstall. Log in with your correct usurer name and password and your in business. Again, at worst, you may have to reload your games but no biggy Steam has all your game keys from time of purchase so you don't even lose those.
I don't know what this verification code mentioned in the article is. Never used one even when the kids and grand kids messed things up a couple of times. Rather than chance glitches from mistakes attempting to make repairs, I just reloaded and went on my merry way.
LatiosXT
February 07, 2012 at 10:10am
Steam sends a notification via email that someone tried to log in on an unrecognized machine. I think SteamServices remembers that you're a valid machine.
deadBird
February 06, 2012 at 5:56pm
Or... Steam just sucks anyways and deserves to be treated as a virus.
someuid
February 06, 2012 at 1:46pm
Or...someone at Avast really likes EA's Origin.
Or...someone at Avast is letting someone at Steam distribute viruses.
Or...Anonymous pulled it off to keep those elite FBI investigators from playing Plants Vs Zombies this weekend.
Or...
Kromix
February 06, 2012 at 12:12pm
Lies! steam is a quick install... unless you delete everything, but that would be just silly...
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