Hi, I recently opened Avast and discovered a message saying that “We found evidence of Grime on your PC”… and gives the option to “Optimize PC”, but is that a good idea? I’ve never had Avast tune-up my PC before, and from my experience with Norton, I couldn’t tell if it made things better or worse.
I’d like to know what steps it would take before allowing it to toy around, as there may be better alternatives that do this.
There is only a button “Optimize my PC” and I have no idea what might happen if I click it.
If it gave me a list of suggestions which I could choose to follow or not, that would be okay.
It says : “9 bloatware programs slowed the launch of this PC”.
OK – can I choose what if anything Avast will do about these once I press the button?
Will it tell me what they are and ask if I want to stop each one individually?
It may well have the best intentions, but if it just proceeds to change things because it thinks it knows better, then I’d pass.
What version (eg. Free ?) are you running ?
I’m just wondering which level of Avast 9 this “tool” comes installed on.
I attached a pic from other post…wondering if this is in just the “Change” option within Program & Features in Windows or also in the Custom Install to uncheck Grime Fighter ? Personally, I’m still waiting for Avast 9 new program releases to upgrade (clean install) from my Avast 8 but think as the attached pic shows I am only installing the “shields”…no tools.
Free 2014.9.0.2011
These “Optimize my PC” popups started a few weeks ago.
I certainly never was explicitly asked if I wanted “Grime fighter”.
But I turned off the “notify me after update” a while ago because it caused an unending stream of popups asking me to upgrade.
Maybe that made Avast default to “Yes, I agree to install everything”.
Anyway, from the discussions you linked I think I can do without it.
It isn’t integrated into Avast’s settings.
But I went to Control panel/Add remove programs and the Avast install and it’s an option there you can uncheck.
Sad that Avast is going the same way as Norton: what used to be simple and clean and effective is getting more and more features and turning into a lumbering dinosaur.
Why don’t they understand that people who use antivirus aren’t all happy to blindly trust an application to screw with their settings?
My wife got caught with an “optimize your PC” trojan a while ago and it completely messed up her PC.
When something like that turns up on my PC my reaction is RED ALERT not “Cool, go ahead.”
Really? Why then was it popping up nagging me to let it run?
Why did I just have to uninstall it when I never heard of it, let alone purchased it?
And why the hell should I have to search a forum and a blog to find out what has been installed on my own PC without my knowledge or consent? (Well, I know why, because they want to sell it to me, but I don’t like it.)
If there are “so many threads” here, doesn’t that indicate that many others are just as mystified and/or annoyed by this “feature” just turning up on their PC?
Nobody called you a liar … you are however totally mistaken.
GrimeFighter is an additional purchase , the only way to get this product is to purchase it and then install.
If you go to the avast installer, Grimefighter is listed, if you run " uninstall" the action runs but actually does nothing.
You can prove this by now trying to install GrimeFighter, the action will appear to run and install the product, but, upon systen restart you will find NOTHING.
The product is listed in the GUI but is not installed.
So, I’m “mistaken” because I believed what the Avast installer said was the case?
It showed Grime Fighter as installed when it wasn’t and faked the uninstall process?
That the popup was not the program it said it was but just spam trying to make me buy it?
Okay. How did the popup know that
“9 bloatware programs slowed the launch of this PC”.
if it wasn’t installed?
Was it just making numbers up?
I’d say that avast’s team needs to be very careful now with their choices, they are little by little making choices that aren’t received well by the users, and if i’m not mistaken the popularity is gained by user to user recommendation so you know how it stands, the way up is very hard, but to stay there is even harder.
I love avast, i contributed to hundreds if not thousand of installations but as of lately I started to give myself questions regarding some changes/choices they made.
Call it what you want but it is “installed”: http://techdows.com/2013/12/uninstall-avast-grimefighter.html
My suggestion for everyone using any software now-a-days is to do a CUSTOM install.
If you are not sure of the options presented then CANCEL and go research.
There is just too many behind the scenes “sneak-ware” put on PCs…some of which that may not be a Virus or Malware but impossible to get off once installed.
For me, after reading this forum for months I am still on Avast8. I went thru the hellish nightmare of AVG8 to AVG9 where they not only bloat-wared the software but actually bricked 1000s of PCs. Want to be paranoid and concerned…just do a search on this Forum on the number of aswrvrt.sys PC reboot hang issues which most folks can only go and do a Windows re-install to recover. http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=145023.0 …but I digress.
Anyway, my point is for “me” when I do see Avast9/2014 more in a solid state I am going to do a clean-install http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=143284.0 with CUSTOM settings and only check the shields…no tools. Then once “installed” I am going to Control Panel>Programs and under Avast “Change” see what other “nuggets” are there than sneaked in an uninstall.
Don’t get me wrong, Avast has been a great product and for their “shields” probably so going forward. But it is clear to me that Avast 9/2014 is a major software re-write and the reason they give “free” versions out is to test their software across the masses. Everyone does this and part of the fun EULA you accept…but you also have to be diligent these days to realize that when you get a FREE software there is other agendas other than what is cleanest/best for your PC…after all they are in the biz to make money. People who don’t take the time to investigate what they are doing to their PC are naïve…as they say “an ounce or prevention is worth a pound of cure”.
Is there any way to revert back to version 8 if I’m already running version 9? I’ve been getting grimefighter popups like 5 times a day and the popups have no checkbox to to stop it from displaying. Avast is almost turning into adware. First they started putting an avast clean message ads on the end of outgoing emails without my permission and now I get all these grimefighter ads. I also sometimes get random freezes on web pages using avast 9 which don’t happen when I turn the avast shields off.