1

Hello Community

Maintenance Center (don’t know if that is the correct name in English) suddenly alarmed me that AVAST FREE and Windows Defender were offline without me doing anything. This happened about half an hour after an Avast Update. So my question is, If I install Avast FREE on my Windows 8.1. Laptop do I have to deactivate my Windows Firewall and Defender for comparability reasons? Thanks in advance!

2

Not the FW, but you’ve to disable WD.

3

When I installed avast on my windows 8.1 systems, windows and/or avast automatically deactivated windows defender. Windows Firewall is not affected.

Windows 8/8.1 automatically detects if a legitimate antivirus program is installed and deactivates windows defender if it has found one.

Since you are using avast free, you don’t need to and shouldn’t deactivate windows firewall.

4

Okay thanks.

Windows warns be about Defender being offline, is that okay?

5

Yes…you do not need Windows Defender (the antivirus part) to be active). But you do need the Windows Firewall to be turned ON unless you have another firewall on your machine.

6

In Windows 8 - 8.1 Defender is a combo of Defender and Security Essentials

7

… and is automatically disabled when an anti-virus is installed.

8

Your question is a fair question. It should not normally do that.

While it’s possible that you may see a message from the Action Center during an Avast major update, I’ve never seen what you saw as a typical occurrence “out of the blue” (i.e., at any time other than during an actual Avast software update).

Normally you do NOT have to do anything yourself; Windows will automatically switch off it’s anti-malware software when it detects Avast on the job.

-Noel

9
I've never seen what you saw as a typical occurrence "out of the blue"
I've seen it on several occasions and there's a simple fix: http://blog.avast.com/2014/04/05/how-do-i-fix-a-microsoft-action-center-warning/