I am using Avast 7.0 Antivirus Free. Currently, if I want to disable Avast real-time protection for the specified amount of time (10 min or 1 hour), the time will expire as soon as I restart my computer!
If I disable the Real-time shields permanently, it does NOT remember which shields were disabled just before this request, when I restore real-time protection. It restores ALL the Real-time shields, even those which were disabled before!
Even if I save the settings and restore them after the restart, the settings of the individual shields is NOT restored instantly.
Thus, it is impossible to disable Avast real-time shields until a program is fully installed! Some programs require a restart after the installation is completed.
Normal behavior. At least,in my limited experience with disabling shields.
Yeah. Any reason you are engaging in this behavior, disabling shields to install programs? If the answer is “crack/keygen”, no one here can help you, no offense intended.
The practice of disabling the AV to install programs is dated, used to be needed sometimes, but you should not need to do it anymore.
So, what are you trying to install? Do you think Avast! interfered somehow?
Most programs leave a lot of junk in the registry after the program is uninstalled. The only way to remove the leftover registry and file entries is to monitor program installation by an uninstall program; for example, a free Advanced Uninstaller or by Totall Uninstall. Thus I need to take two system snapshots by an uninstall program:
- Before the program is installed.
- After the program has been completely installed.
Then I can see and later remove all the registry changes as well as the files added by the program during installation.
Before the installation, the program is scanned by an antivirus program manually, for safety. However, antivirus program must be disabled during installation since antivirus program can add spurious registry and file changes.
P.S. Other antivirus programs, for example, Kaspersky Antivirus, NOD32, and Microsoft Security Essentials do have the capability to temporarily disable real-time protection and resume it manually later! Note that all the program settings are retained when the user manually resumes real-time protection!!! Unfortunately, currently, Avast does NOT have this capability to temporarily disable real-time protection, and resume it later manually with ALL the program settings identical to those before the real-time protection was disabled.
I think what you are trying to achieve is futile - you’d have to run the monitor every time you run the program in question (because it can create additional registry values or files during any run, not just during the installation), and you would also have to stop any background programs/services during each run, not just the antivirus (not to interfere) - which would basically turn your Windows into a single-task OS.
Besides, it’s definitely dangerous - installation is exactly the most important moment when the real-time shields should be active; scanning the installer manually is not enough, there are many installer formats that are not unpacked during the scan.
Yes, stopping the shields for a specific time period is only valid till reboot - they will be enabled again when the antivirus service starts, no matter if the time has elapsed or not, and I don’t think we are going to change that. Besides the scanning is not really something you should be concerned about - it certainly doesn’t add any registry entries, and regarding files… maybe some temporary files created during unpacking, where it doesn’t really matter whether they will be in the installation log or not (as they are long gone anyway).
There are other things that may be happening on background though - such as downloading a new virus definition update - which certainly can create new files, and is not bound to shields being active or not.
These programs since Norton CleanSweep do more harm than good if something is running in background. They promise to track ONLY the modifications of certain application, but, in all of my personal experience (including Comodo Programs Manager) they always mess and remove other files/registry keys.
Windows is never at a pure state of nothing running in background…
My personal opinion and personal experience.
On contrary, is that when they should be ON for sure.