Any good antivirus program will allow you to whitelist any detected file--no matter how malicious the AV thinks it is--and it will then ignore that file for all future monitoring and scans unless the file is modified or something else tries to interact with it (in either case you can simply repeat the whitelisting). Some antivirus programs will refer to this function as adding the file to the ignore list or trusted programs or whatever, but the end result is the same. I haven't tested this with MSE myself as yet but I know this is certainly the case for Avast!, AVG and various others.

Trainers should be flagged as malicious. They interfere with another program's active memory, which is clear evidence of malicious activity. The same goes for password-recovery tools and various other special types of programs. The vast majority of users will never be running legitimate programs that display malicious activity, and the small portion that do will know how to add such files to their personal whitelists anyway.

I misunderstood what you needed, sorry.
I have never and never will use MS firewall- I have a separate one, and I haven't used any trainers, yet, so I don't know what they require.

I'll shut up now.

That was so stupid. Why not cry foul and not have it install calculator, paint and notepad while they're at it.

IE isn't tied into the core system with Vista and 7 like it was with xp and earlier versions so if you insist on not having it on their newer operating systems, you can fully remove it.

On Avast! you can right click and disable all "shields" or just the ones you want until further notice. Do not buy software firewalls, back in 2000 they were useful, today not so much. You'll get way more mileage out of a properly configured NAT switch.

Honestly Avast! doesn't interfere with my games at all. I've even hosted LAN parties with Avast! running on my host machine.

AVG is on CheatHappens official shitlist. I personally facilitated communication between AVG and Chris O'Rourke to get AVG to add what was then the current list of trainers to their whitelist, and it took many weeks and many different outsourced AVG operators (from anywhere between Eastern Europe and West Asia). Even then, during the next AVG program update, all those trainers went right back on the auto-quarantine list. Now it's considered "required reading" for all CH forum users and Unlimited Members to read the disclaimer about AVG, and that it's strongly recommended that users find another AV program right quick.

I used to be an advocate of AVG Pro, but when it evolved past version 6, it became more and more bloatware.

Also, I really hope you're not planning to start a flamewar over the use of trainers or other cheats in singleplayer games. This isn't the thread for that.

Sorry, it seems I wasn't clear enough. Trainers are legitimate software but they are also very much niche software, and whitelisting them tends to be more trouble than it is worth.

Individual whitelisting is the ideal way to approach trainers because the way they interact with memory is not inherently that different from a malicious program; attempting to modify the injection detection to exclude common trainer behaviour can potentially create blind spots that truly malicious programs could exploit. In addition to this, the vast number of trainers available makes adding them a very time-consuming process that is of no benefit to the vast majority of users. These and other reasons are why some vendors refuse to whitelist trainers and other similar programs, and no amount of complaining will change their internal policy on this.

For the tiny percentage of users that are actually using trainers the absence of official whitelisting is no barrier because they can be individually added to the personal whitelist from the detection pop-up, although AVG makes this less straightforward (it can only be done from an execution alert, not a virus alert, and so you may need to try to run the program again after setting the virus alert to ignore in order to make the execution alert appear). Most antivirus products also let you add entire folders to the whitelist in advance (although to lessen the potential security risk this should be done for a dedicated trainers folder, not your downloads folder as a whole).

Arkose couldn't start a flamewar if he tried.

no

Personally, I love the speed of IEx being tied into the core OS. I start any other browser, Firefox for example, wait 30 seconds, and then start IE8, and IE8 is at google faster than FF is.
Sure, IE has drawbacks - but for basic surfing and whatnot, it's my default browser of choice. Fpr games, that require or are better with some added functionality, or WebTV, FF is the one I go to. Tried Chrome. Sucked. Tried Opera. Pretty much ditto.

Now if only IE gets extensions and scripting support <3