Release Notes

NovaShield Anti-Malware v2.5

Windows Defender blocks NovaShield Console on Vista:
If you have Windows Defender installed on your Vista system, Windows Defender may mistakenly block NovaShield from launching the Console Window on system startup. In the Windows Defender application, allow NovaShield.exe to run by whitelisting it in the application. This is a temporary workaround, as the NovaShield development team will provide a fix for this problem in a future release.

NovaShield Console not easily elevated to Administrator on Vista when it is running:
If you have the NovaShield Console running, even if the Console window is closed (as long as the NovaShield icon is visible in the system tray, the NovaShield Console is running), any attempt to launch the NovaShield Console again only opens the Console that is already running. On Vista, this means that if you try to elevate the NovaShield Console to Administrator while the console is running, the existing non-elevated Console will open up instead. The workaround is to right-click on the NovaShield icon in the system tray and select Exit to terminate the NovaShield Console. Then, run the NovaShield Console as Administrator by right-clicking on the NovaShield icon in the Start Menu, on the Desktop, or in your Quick Launch bar and selecting Run as Administrator. In a later release, the Vista version of the NovaShield Console will allow the user to more conveniently elevate it to Administrator privileges.

Quarantining of Sensitive System Files:
When a malware modifies sensitive system files (e.g., the "hosts" file), NovaShield Anti-Malware will quarantine those files and remove them to prevent malware from damaging your system. However, in certain cases, this may cause some system programs to behave in unexpected ways until the original versions of these files are restored.

Data Execution Protection (DEP):
Currently, the NovaShield Anti-Malware product will not run on systems that have Data Execution Protection (DEP) setting set to "AlwaysOn". This value must be changed to one of other three possible values: "OptIn, OptOut, or AlwaysOff" for NovaShield Anti-Malware to run properly. For more information on DEP, please refer to Microsoft’s documentation on DEP: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/875352

Formatting/Deletion of Partitions:
When NovaShield is running, the system will not allow formatting or deletion of a partition. If these operations are desired, the user will have to disable NovaShield and exit the NovaShield console.

Items Quarantined Count Incorrect Under Certain Conditions:
When in the Console program on the Alerts pane in the Quarantine view, if you hover your mouse over an alert a tooltip comes up to describe the number of items that have been quarantined. This value will be reported incorrectly under certain conditions, for example, where more data is collected about the items that were quarantined after the initial quarantine action was taken.

Restore of Quarantined Registry Items:
If you quarantine a malicious program, and later realize that you want to allow it, under certain rare circumstances extremely long registry values that have been quarantined may not be restored correctly.

Database Locking Problem:
If you see an error message that the database is locked, your NovaShield console may quit. In almost all cases, this error is not serious. Simply restart the console program and NovaShield Anti-Malware will operate correctly.

Version 2.5.6 – released November 24th, 2008

• Includes various fixes for multiple instability issues.
• Includes a fix for the problem where subsequent alerts were not ignored when a program was white-listed.
• Includes a fix for the problem where the periodic purging of alerts causes some system instability issues.

Version 2.5.8 – released December 22nd, 2008

• Includes a fix for a problem where the alert database occasionally gets locked.
• Includes a fix for an instability issue where occasionally a program on your system begins to take up lots of processor time, thereby slowing down your system.
• Updated the help files delivered with NovaShield Anti-Malware, and the user manual.

Version 2.5.30 – released February 18th, 2009

• Includes a number of bug fixes in the Console that make it more stable.
• Includes a fix for handling localized date/time values.
• Includes a number of fixes that reduce false positives.
• Includes fixes to gracefully handle when the user runs out of disk space on their machine.
• Includes a number of fixes to the License Manager to make it more intuitive.