Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Why does Eset tell me FirefoxSetup Win32/InstallCore.RA is malware?

more options

Couple hours back I replaced Microsoft Security Essentials with eset Smart Security 8 (2014 edition). It did a scan and then issued a warning as follows: "The following list contains threats that were found during a computer scan and could not be cleared automatically."

The list included:

Name of file: C:\Documents and Settings\NEW\My Documents\Downloads\FirefoxSetup.exe Threat description: a variant of Win32/InstallCore.RA potentially unwanted application

Sort of freaked me out. So I went and looked in the file directory "C:\Documents and Settings\NEW\My Documents\Downloads\" in hopes of looking at the file date and file size of the FirefoxSetup.exe file. But the directory contained only two filenames, and no listing of FirefoxSetup.exe which puzzled me because I did not tell ESET to clean the file or delete it.

So... ennyway... what's going on... why is ESET telling me that FirefoxSetup.exe is a potential threat ?

Will much appreciate guidance on this point.

Couple hours back I replaced Microsoft Security Essentials with eset Smart Security 8 (2014 edition). It did a scan and then issued a warning as follows: "The following list contains threats that were found during a computer scan and could not be cleared automatically." The list included: Name of file: C:\Documents and Settings\NEW\My Documents\Downloads\FirefoxSetup.exe Threat description: a variant of Win32/InstallCore.RA potentially unwanted application Sort of freaked me out. So I went and looked in the file directory "C:\Documents and Settings\NEW\My Documents\Downloads\" in hopes of looking at the file date and file size of the FirefoxSetup.exe file. But the directory contained only two filenames, and no listing of FirefoxSetup.exe which puzzled me because I did not tell ESET to clean the file or delete it. So... ennyway... what's going on... why is ESET telling me that FirefoxSetup.exe is a potential threat ? Will much appreciate guidance on this point.

Chosen solution

More than likely, ESET is showing a false positive.

For that last 4 months or so Mozilla has had 2 different installation packages; the "Stub Installer" [238 kb] which is an on-line package that downloads the files needed to install Firefox, and the "traditional" full off-line installer [35 mb] that contains everything needed for the installation of Firefox. A number of security suites have been flagging the "Stub installer" incorrectly.

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (4)

more options

Chosen Solution

More than likely, ESET is showing a false positive.

For that last 4 months or so Mozilla has had 2 different installation packages; the "Stub Installer" [238 kb] which is an on-line package that downloads the files needed to install Firefox, and the "traditional" full off-line installer [35 mb] that contains everything needed for the installation of Firefox. A number of security suites have been flagging the "Stub installer" incorrectly.

more options

Dear Head Meister... seelen danke

more options

The stub installer on Windows has existed since Firefox 18.0 released in January 2013. You would think the antivirus companies would get would better at it by now.

more options

Many thanks for the info. 10 demerits to Eset