Report file

On this page you can create a report of the scan results. You can specify whether you want the report to be created as a plain text file, or in XML format.

If you want to create a new report after each scan, and you don’t want to keep a record of previous scan results, select “overwrite”. A new report will then be created after each scan and will replace any previous report.

If you want to keep the previous scan results, select “Append” and the results of the new scan will be added to the end of the previous report.

Finally, you can specify what will be reported:

  • Infected items – files that potentially contain a virus or other malware infection.
  • Hard errors – these arise when the program detects something that would not normally be expected and generally require further investigation.
  • Soft errors – these are less serious than hard errors and usually concern files that could not be scanned, for example, because they were open and being used by another application.
  • OK items – these are files that were scanned where nothing suspicious was detected. If all local drives are scanned, checking this box could produce a very long report. It is recommended to check this box only if you intend to carry out a limited scan and only if you really want all clean files to be reported as well as any problematic files.
  • Skipped items – these are files that were not scanned as a result of the scan settings, for example, if it was specified that only files with specific extension should be scanned or if certain files were specifically excluded from the scan.

The reports are usually stored in the following location:

For a computer running Windows 2000/XP – C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AVAST Software\Avast\report

For a computer running Windows Vista or Windows 7 – C:\ProgramData\AVAST Software\Avast\report

To view a report after running a manual scan, click on “Show Report File”, which can be found on the Scan Now screen when the scan is completed.

To view a report created by one of the real-time shields, go to the main screen for the particular shield then click on the “Shield Traffic” bar. Then click on “Show Report File” at the bottom of the screen.

Report file