Interestingly enough I decided to give Avast 9 another try at the office (separate license) and noticed that the file size of the installer had changed.
When the original installer was downloaded on the 16th of October is was 121,506,128 bytes, but when downloaded today it is 121,680,752 bytes - 1.74624Mb bigger!
I’m therefore wondering if the installer has been updated to fix Windows 8.1 install issues?
Fingers are firmly crossed and I’ll try it at home tonight!
Well I’m overjoyed to say that after a long struggle (removing all files from the prior install attempts) and removing all traces of Avast from the registry that Avast 9 finally loaded on my home PC.
This is a great relief as my license runs until January 2015 and of all the competing products I’ve tried I’ve had issues:
Bitdefender - issues with the firewall
F-Secure - limited control over the system, trial can not be reloaded
Kaspersky - unstable, slowed down Outlook 2013 and tended to suffer from loading failures
I may not be overjoyed with some of the Avast 9 UIX changes and the embedded adverts for other services but at least it works with little CPU impact, etc.