1. My anti-virus software reported that executable file protected with PC Guard for .NET/Win32 is infected with 'Unknown virus'. Is this to be taken seriously?

Simple answer is: It is just a fake alarm. The more complex one is: During protection process executable application (EXE/DLL) is modified as it is being encrypted and a new part of code is added to the file. This new part of code contains protection routines which are hidden under a number of encryption layers. Anti-virus software usually identifies protected applications as "Armored" but some of them can generate false alarms. If you encounter such problem please report it to us.

2. Protected application startup is slow when my AV software does online application monitoring?

This problem is related to any AV software which does online application monitoring and tries to "trace" protected executable in order to find suspicious virus code. Application protected with PC Guard for .NET/Win32 contains many decryption and self-modifying routines. Tracing through such code makes decryption process slow. AV software should be able to recognize protected files and skip decryption parts. Standard virus scanning has no effect on protected applications. Turn off online application monitoring in your AV software.


3. My application is 25MB in size and loading time of protected application is longer than loading time of non-protected (original) version?

Some time is required for decryption process once the file is loaded into memory. Decryption time depends on program size and CPU strength. It's also longer if you protect the same file more then once.


4. When I create an application set-up, I get a message "No dependency information for file: PCGW32.DLL". Is there a dependency file, or shall I simply ignore the message?

Don't worry about it. Just ignore the message.

Your program does not make any direct calls to PCGW32.DLL (there is no IMPORT information about this DLL) and you are just warned that this DLL is not used by your program. Just forget about it because this dll is called directly from the PC Guard's protection layer which is implemented into your protected application.
 

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