Stuck in the Avast SafeZone

Here’s another post that I hope may help someone else to solve a problem that took me a couple of hours to get to the bottom of.

My kids share a very basic laptop, on which I installed Avast! free version as the anti-virus solution (with which I am generally very pleased). However, whilst playing with the gadgets, one of the kids managed to get the machine into the SafeZone, and there it seemed stuck: both “Switch back” and “Turn off SafeZone” briefly exit but immediately return to the SafeZone.

I found that others have had this problem, but the suggestions I found did not help in my case. I really didn’t want to un-install and re-install Avast, and so I hunted around a bit for an alternative fix. Here’s what I found.

How to Set VLC as the Default DVD Player (Windows 7)

Having spent some time searching the web for an answer to this question, I found the same partial information repeated many times. I prefer to keep auto-play disabled. However, I was still finding that Windows Media Player would always start when I double-clicked the DVD drive icon.

Eventually, I decided to have a bit of a dig around in the system.

C++ Style

There are plenty of resources concerning C++ coding style, or coding style more generally.

Here I describe some of my own programming style preferences that I have not seen described elsewhere.

BitRock Style: Miscellaneous Notes on Coding Style for BitRock InstallBuilder

Although BitRock InstallBuilder has a GUI, it is also practical to edit the sources, which are XML files, in an editor.

Beware that when you save the sources from the GUI, hand-edited files may be reorganised. For example, in many cases element siblings are rearranged into a sorted order. (Also beware that hand-edited files are not automatically re-loaded by the GUI; you must do this explicitly.)

Here I make some suggestions for trying to keep BitRock sources readable.

BitRock Tip: Determination of Architecture + Platform

In BitRock InstallBuilder, defining folders specific to 32-bit and/or 64-bit architectures and Linux and/or Windows is simple but not entirely obvious. Here are some recipes.

What to Look for in a (Free, Open-source) Software Download

There is a huge amount of free software available. But you need to take care.

Why Free Open-source Software is Better than Commerical Software

Well, that’s a slightly unfair title. Here are some reasons why free, open-source software can be, and often is, better than commercial software.

Stack Exchange

The is now a plethora of incredibly useful question-and-answer sites available. Here are a few that I like.

English Letter Names

Table…

SVN Tip: Find/Grep but excluding .svn (Linux)

Here I give Linux commands to allow the searching for filenames or strings within files without descending into the <.svn> subdirectories.