Alert - eXtendia AVK Pro Failure Under DEP

[ABoard]

Just a little heads up for the few of you who:

A. Use eXtendia AntiVirus Pro (AVK Pro); and
B. Have turned on Data Execution Protection (DEP) under
SP2 for "all programs and services" except for those you
specifically exclude.

Here's a description of what I found to happen:

AVK Pro works fine with DEP left at default settings (DEP turned on for essential Windows programs and services only).

However, I was testing DEP, so I selected "Turn on DEP for all programs and services except those that I select". Immediately upon rebooting (a requirement after changing DEP settings), I tested all installed programs and only found the following did not work properly:

TDS-3 Update Module (update.exe)
Prime95 (prime95.exe)
MS Outlook 2003 (could not load AVK Pro plug-in)

DEP normally prompts the user with a message regarding the offending application, and allows the user to add the program to the list of exceptions. This was easily done with Prime95 and TDS-3 Update. However, when a *.dll (or perhaps any file that is not an *.EXE) causes the problem with DEP, the error message is [usually] launched from within the application that fails, not directly from DEP. This is what happened with the AVK plug-in & Outlook 2003; the AVK plug-in that caused the DEP problem is not an executable, so MS Outlook simply notified me that the plug-in had failed to load. In this case, MS Outlook 2003 could be manually added to the DEP exceptions list (the AVK plug-in could not be added because only *.EXEs can be added), and it turns out that this "fix" allowed the AVK Pro plug-in to load and function without problems from within Outlook 2003 (alternatively, MS Outlook gives you the option to disable the failed plug-in, which also works).

Next, I tested the AVK Pro on-access scanner, and it seemed to function normally.

However, after testing the on-demand scanner more thoroughly, I was somewhat surprised and concerned that I was able to run a full system scan that normally took approximately 3 hours (600,000+ files / archives) in less than 10 minutes. The AVK Pro scanner dialogue properly showed the files being scanned but just seemed to run much too fast. It also failed to detect any of the EICAR virus files I have stored on the PC and failed to detect a virus that I know to be stored in an old newsgroup archive (all of these files / viruses are normally detected by AVK Pro).

Because at this point I had come to believe that any issues with DEP would be brought to the users attention via one error message or another, I wasn't sure if this was a DEP issue. I returned the DEP settings to default, rebooted, and sure enough, AVK Pro worked normally again. Still not satisfied, though, because I had not gotten an error message warning me of incompatibility, I re-enabled DEP for all applications, uninstalled AVK Pro, then re-installed. I got no error messages during the main install, but after rebooting (a requirement of the installation), DEP warned me that OnVirus.exe (a component of AVK Pro) could not be installed properly and gave me the option to add it to DEP exceptions. I added the file and re-tested the AVK Pro on-demand scanner; it failed to work properly even with the excepted file and would not detect known viruses. I then added all *.EXEs from the AVK Pro folder to the DEP exceptions list, and after re-testing, I have concluded that AVK Pro is now working properly again. I have not determined yet exactly which AVK Pro file was responsible for the failure to function under DEP (whether failure was from just one file or a combination of files, etc.).

Anyway, I felt compelled to post this alert out of general concern, but also because I have posted once to this forum recommending eXtendia AVK Pro as an alternative to more well known AV applications. To be fair, I never had issues with AVK Pro outside the described DEP issues, but it is of particular concern that AVK Pro "appears" to function properly with DEP turned on for all applications, even when AVK Pro really isn't functioning properly. The only reason I was able to recognize so quickly that something was wrong was that I was already familiar with how fast AVK Pro should run and was also familiar with files it should have detected but did not.

Thanks for reading.