Avast Business Antivirus 21.6

To be released mid August 2021
Release Summary

This release contains new improvements and bug fixes to our Avast Business Antivirus client.

Avast Business Antivirus 21.6 will be available for new installations immediately. All existing devices will start the automatic upgrade to 21.6 at a later time.

If you wish to upgrade your devices to 21.6 prior to the automatic upgrade, then you can create a new Task (Update device – Program update task) from your console.

A system reboot will be required to complete the installation. There will be no forced reboot, unless you have set this in your device policy settings. Servers will never reboot, regardless of your device policy settings.

Improvements

• Useful Smart Scan notifications — We’ve fine-tuned the behavior of Smart Scan with improved initialization steps, and ensured that you receive proper notifications about scheduled scans.
• Better feature shortcuts — We’ve changed the main tile navigation so Avast Antivirus features are easier to distinguish from shortcuts to other Avast products.
• Fewer interruptions in fullscreen - When you’re running another app fullscreen, our antivirus will no longer open on top and interrupt you. We apologize if this happened to you! (And don’t worry, threat warnings will still appear, so you’ll always know about malware even while watching your favorite film)
• Introducing Webcam Shield reminders - If you’ve configured Webcam Shield to automatically block or allow apps, we’ll now remind you of this when an app tries to access your webcam so you don’t sit around wondering why your webcam isn’t working. (For AV Pro Plus only)
• Updated privacy policies - We’ve updated our General Privacy Policy and other connected privacy policies. You can find them here: https://www.avast.com/privacy-policy

Bug fixes for:

• The latest renderer version stopped supporting CPUs with SSE2, so we needed to add an install block and freeze users using this older pieces of HW on 21.4 version (relevant for lower tens of thousands of users)
• Fixed cases of infinite loader when turning off some of core shield via Settings
• Fixed support tool (collection logs and info for customer support and debugging) that was not properly grabbing AV status and subscription status in RE, plus it now reports WSC status
• Virus Chest has been renamed to Quarantine
• Fixed removal of scheduled tasks
• Fixed a case when some of antivirus windows opened in the background (behind other full-screen app) even if this was not desired while interacting with it
• Added support for the Tools category of the Potential Unwanted Programs.
• Fixed a tray icon error that showed an issue notification despite everything being OK
• Fixed a Firewall issue where driver aswNetHub.sys caused a BSOD
• Fixed a leak of GDI objects
• Fixed the AvastClear, which didn’t properly remove the antivirus from Windows Security Centre
• Fixed issue with creating Rescue Disk for UEFI format (next to BIOS)
• Other Rescue Disk improvements: fixed a bug that prevented Rescue Disk from starting, improved keyboard controls, etc.

History:

21.4 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=284294.0
21.3 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=265630.0
21.2 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=260104.0
21.1 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=253099.0
20.10 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=247279.0
20.9 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=241323.0
20.8 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=239423.0
20.7 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=238393.0
20.6 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=237579.0
20.5 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=235426.0
20.4 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=234947.0
20.3 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=234369.0
20.2 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=233617.0
20.1 - https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=232891.0

So you skipped 21.5? :thinking:

Yes, clients will update directly to 21.6. Version 21.5 was not released publicly.

One of my clients is having issues when updating to version 21.6.
After reboot the server crashed with error “KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED.”
We restarted the server several times with abovementioned error. After 3 times failed to restart, the server was started into safemode.
I’ve removed avast software with avastclear.exe. After completion the server came back on without any further issues, but without antivirus.
Today I reinstalled avast business security initiated from the Business Hub. Installation went fine, showing the avast icon in the systemtray. Opening avast without problems, but after a restart, the server came back with BSOD: KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED.

How to deal with this issue?
The particular server is Windows Server 2019 Essentals running on a Dell PowerEdge T140 hardware.

Contact business support: https://www.avast.com/business-support-contact-form.php