Some antivirus software packages have been flagging various RealFlight executables as containing a virus. These are false positives; the applications do not actually contain malicious software, but sometimes they look that way to protection software.
We had previously seen this with the installer and the LauncherHelper. Immediately prior to the release of 9.5 we submitted those executables to Microsoft for review, and they updated their definitions to prevent incorrectly flagging them. We had not seen the same problem with the Launcher until today, when apparently the latest definitions update from Microsoft caused Windows Defender to start quarantining it.
We have now submitted RealFlight 9.5's Launcher9.exe for review as well. Hopefully this problem will be remedied shortly; Microsoft's response time previously was impressive.
We will also explore ways of preventing this from happening as much in the future.
In the meantime, here are the steps you can take to fix the situation on your computer when dealing with Windows Defender:
Please do not attempt to remedy the problem by copying a different .exe into place, such as from your installation DVDs or a source online. There are a few reasons for this. The best solution, both for an immediate fix and to reduce the chances of it happening again, are to go through the above steps.
If you are having the same problem with different antivirus software, you should have some options which are similar to the above. We can't provide step-by-step instructions, but the above should at least be a helpful guide. Also, please let us know which utility is complaining, so that we can attempt to address it with them.
Hopefully there will be an update from Microsoft soon. You may find it helpful to periodically manually trigger a check for updated definitions
We had previously seen this with the installer and the LauncherHelper. Immediately prior to the release of 9.5 we submitted those executables to Microsoft for review, and they updated their definitions to prevent incorrectly flagging them. We had not seen the same problem with the Launcher until today, when apparently the latest definitions update from Microsoft caused Windows Defender to start quarantining it.
We have now submitted RealFlight 9.5's Launcher9.exe for review as well. Hopefully this problem will be remedied shortly; Microsoft's response time previously was impressive.
We will also explore ways of preventing this from happening as much in the future.
In the meantime, here are the steps you can take to fix the situation on your computer when dealing with Windows Defender:
- Open Virus & threat protection settings. You can often get to this by clicking a recent notification in the task bar, but you can also open the Windows Start menu and start typing "virus".
- Click Protection history.
- You should see something like the following (though probably with fewer items listed). Find the "Threat quarantined" item with the correct date and click to expand it.
- Click the Actions dropdown and select Restore.
- At this point the affected .exe should once again exist in its original location. Now, click Actions again and select Allow to prevent it from happening again.
Please do not attempt to remedy the problem by copying a different .exe into place, such as from your installation DVDs or a source online. There are a few reasons for this. The best solution, both for an immediate fix and to reduce the chances of it happening again, are to go through the above steps.
If you are having the same problem with different antivirus software, you should have some options which are similar to the above. We can't provide step-by-step instructions, but the above should at least be a helpful guide. Also, please let us know which utility is complaining, so that we can attempt to address it with them.
Hopefully there will be an update from Microsoft soon. You may find it helpful to periodically manually trigger a check for updated definitions