So I have about 2 yrs left of my IS subscription and I keep seeing this store tab. I had it disabled and now upon reformat, I cannot disable this feature on fresh install.
Does the new version have the disable feature removed?
yes
Any registry edits I can do to remove this?
I don’t think paid subscriptions should be forced to have a tab full of advertisement of the company’s product.
If I cannot, I will not be renewing my subscription. This program is going downhill each update. Between bloat-ware and customization removal, this program is becoming shit.
I am so close to going MSE route.
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MSE is sht… even MS has said MSE is sht.
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With any installation you are doing for any program you should be choosing custom install anyway so what’s the difference? No bloat if you just don’t install it.
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Just don’t click the store tab… I forget it’s even there unless someone says something. Ignore it.
Seriously I don’t know how old you are and Im not too old, but Ive certainly trained myself over the years to tune out all advertising… everywhere… all day… every day lol. The only thing that might ever get me is a taco bell commercial late at night but that’s just cause I love to eat. Train yourself to block out ads, man… they’re everywhere and only gonna get worse.
If this was free, I would.
However, I have a 3 year paid subscription.
That said, Avast is not what they use to be. Their software is becoming bloatware. I remember how grimfighter causes lots of complaints way back then. Yet they did nothing about it.
W/e.
@Avast, got a registry hack? If not, you lost me as a customer. You can even flag my account and check once my subscription expires that I was true to my word.
Nice advice, only problem is, what works for you might not work for someone else. We are all different you know. 
Don’t go with MSE, go with Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition, NO ADS OF ANY KIND and works great and has an excellent rating.
As you can see here PCmag.com has ranked it second best overall for all AV programs at The Best Antivirus for 2015 website, which is as current as you can get.
Btw, here is a simple ON-LINE QUICK SCAN provided by Bitdefender.
If Avast doesn’t start cleaning up their act I’m likely going to try out the FREE version of Bitdefender.
That said, after 20+ years with Avast I’d MUCH RATHER STAY WITH AVAST!!!
But of course that’s up to Avast. I’m certainly NOT going to continue and put up with POPUP ads about stuff I’m already aware of and not interested in at the moment and I’m certainly not going to upgrade to Avast2015 with that “Store” tab on display (that is simply ridiculous).
I’ll stay with Avast if the POPUPS GET UNDER CONTROL (not at least one and maybe even as many as more than 5 a day at times) and IF they get smart and allow the user to at least disable (remove) the “Store” tab. Why in the world do moderately sophisticated users need a tab like THAT anyway?
bitdefender has zero configuration and no gui… good results but the program itself lacks in many ways.
Thanks for the tip, I HOPE I DON’T HAVE TO FIND OUT FOR MYSELF as long as Avast would not continue on this obtrusive path they are on trying to generate revenue at the expense of their loyal users.
I’m assuming you have you used Bitdefender Antivirus Free ? (if you haven’t check out the link in regards to what I’ve posted below)
I haven’t used it (since I’m a very long-time Avast user as you know, 20+ years, before that Mcafee and Norton), but that said if you check out the link above you find the following which looks pretty good to me, see outline from link below which is an overview that would suggest some level of GUI (and as you probably know Bitdefender has registered perfect marks for protection and performance in tests approaching 100% detection rate as I understand it):
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Key Features:
Real-time Shield - The real time shield is designed to protect your entire system from infected files coming from the outside, before they have a chance to spread inside your PC.
Active Virus Control - Proactive technology that quickly and accurately detects potential threats, even in cases of new viruses for which there is no default protection released yet.
Intrusion Detection System - Ensures that applications trying to access the Internet or the network are not masked malware. Intrusion Detection is automatically alerted when such apps behave in a suspect manner, and blocks them when they go over the limit.
B-Have - Proactively detects unknown threats that other products miss, by analyzing how apps behave in a safe environment. If no malicious actions are detected, B-Have starts the program normally. Otherwise, it will automatically quarantine or delete it.
HTTP Scanning - Protects you from scams such as credit card phishing attempts, Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition scans all the links you access from your browser and blocks them when they prove to be unsafe.
Anti-rootkit - Rootkits are a type of stealth software, often malicious, that can help hackers get control of your computer. Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition uses special technology that detects and blocks such malicious software.
Early Boot Scanning - This technology scans the system at boot time, as soon as all critical services are loaded. Early boot scanning ensures virus detection at system startup, while also improving boot time.
Auto Scan - A huge time and resource saver, Auto Scan is a Bitdefender proprietary technology that focuses virus detection efforts on risky areas.
Overview:
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition has been engineered to enable you to enjoy your computer to the max, without having to worry about viruses and other e-threats.
Called “artificial intelligence” because it will always find the best way for your system to stay clear of dangers without requiring special configuring. And, more importantly, without slowing down your system.
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition shares some of the revolutionary technologies that allowed their main product line to outpass major competitors such as AVG, Avast or Avira.
Knock yourself out. Ive tried them all.
Bitdefender Antivirus Free Edition shares some of the revolutionary technologies that allowed their main product line to outpass major competitors such as AVG, Avast or Avira.Excellent double talk. :)
Really ?
I would not change Avast just because it got a Store Tab in its UI or that it gives a couple of popups advertising promotions to better your security, but if you think, it deserves to be changed for another AV because of these points, be my guest, try another AV. It is your computer anyways, but do not bash Avast and then use bitdefender promotion site to advertise another AV here.
Strangely enough I haven’t got a Store Tab, I can remember it from a long time ago and at that point there was an option to disable it, which I did. I don’t believe this is held in the registry, more likely it is in the various avast .ini files, probably avast5.ini - But looking in mine I don’t see anything obvious.
My program updates in avast I have done either by over installation or update from the UI and my settings have been honoured/preserved - so no Store Tab.
Even if it were there, I don’t live in the UI, even more so for the most part I only go to the UI in response to topics/posts in these forums and then mainly to do screen captures.
So if it were there I doubt I would notice it - in the free version there is an Ad in the bottom third of the main UI page and I really have learned to tune that out - unless it was something I was interested in.
Yeah…
In older versions, you were able to disable the store tab using the settings.
I’m currently using Internet Security and I have the store tab.
I’d like that setting to come back to disable the store back as it was in previous versions.
I personally don’t care one way or the other since I hardly ever use the UI except
to post a screenshot from various parts to help someone else. 
I have never posted about another AV until now and my intention is NOT to “bash Avast”, but rather I’m more interested in “customer retention” in regards to Avast.
IF YOU NOTICE I WAS RESPONDING TO A POST WHERE THE PERSON WAS SAYING THEY WERE GOING TO CHANGE TO MSE (here’s the post I replied to below):
The ONLY reason I posted what I did was that in my opinion they would be much better off NOT “going the MSE route” and posted a better alternative assuming of course this user was going to leave Avast anyway.
So you see your conclusion is absolutely INCORRECT.
I’ve posted that I’ve been using Avast for 15 years or possibly even 20 years (can’t really recall the exact date but it’s somewhere around that time give or take a few years).
… So with that in mind what would be my reason for “bashing Avast” after all these years.
And why would I have recommended Avast to family/friends and I would add literally 100’s of classmates and many instructors when I returned to college way back with Avast was new on the scene and virtually “unknown” to learn Information Science and start a whole new career in computer programming following my previous year in psychology as a counselor for 15 years.
I can tell you I’ve probably promoted Avast more than anyone on this board to be perfectly honest. But with that said, I am getting a bit tired of hearing an increasing number of family and friends complaining to me about my recommendation over the years when they bring up the advertising approach Avast has been taking in recent years. And as I’ve said before, I do have a lot of contacts as result of my past career (now long ago retired) and to be fair I now have to warn people about the approach Avast now takes regarding advertising to people who ask for advise as to what to us for an AV program (most of the time it is for FREE protection btw). I will continue to say I myself use Avast, but I feel in all fairness they have to be forewarned of the advertising they will incur if the elect to go with Avast and I do feel an obligation to offer to them alternatives that do not do this.
My point in all of this is I’d rather be able to recommend Avast unconditionally to all new prospective customers, but I simply cannot in all fairness. And so the bottom line is that in my opinion I question the direction Avast is taking considering the fact that there are a certain number of people who will simply go in another direction because of the way the feel about this. So this is the very reason why I have posted alternative approaches that would still provide Avast with solid advertising for “newer” customers of Avast and on the other hand more long-term customers can look forward to being rewarded for their loyalty and incur less advertising of products that through the many years they are clearly already aware of anyway and would by that time very likely not be interested anyway for reasons that they either could not afford it or are just simply not interested in anyway.
I don’t see how my ideas and opinions are detrimental to Avast in the least, but I salute your loyalty to Avast. All Avast users should continue to be “loyal” customers and it would be nice to know if there could more reason to feel this way if in fact Avast were to be more conciliatory and take a slightly different approach than they have been in recent years regarding this topic.
BOTTOM LINE: I WANT TO REMAIN WITH AVAST, period, and I would like Avast to make moderate changes in the direction I’ve suggested to make this possible. Whether I leave Avast after all this time or not I would wish the best and I think it is fair to help others out who would have otherwise stayed with Avast as well but feel compelled to leave for the same reasons. If Avast were to moderate their approach to advertising I’d likely be back at that time or of course would never leave in the first place if this were the case. In my view I am offering alternatives that from my perspective actually HELP AVAST to compete at a higher level in the market place. But then if you don’t agree, that’s fine I respect that as well.
Do you have references for both of those claims, especially the latter?
Her’s just one link from what I consider a reliable and reputable source:
http://www.howtogeek.com/173291/goodbye-microsoft-security-essentials-microsoft-now-recommends-you-use-a-third-party-antivirus/
That article is an interesting one, stating conflicting messages from MS. The author claims that “Holly Stewart, the senior program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, said that Microsoft Security Essentials was just a ‘baseline’ that’s designed to ‘always be on the bottom’ of antivirus tests” and that Microsoft directly states that “We believe in Microsoft antimalware products and strongly recommend them to our customers, to our friends, and to our families.”
If the quotes are verifiable, one can conclude from that single article that MS has sent mixed messages regarding MSE, not that they don’t recommend it. Personally, I don’t recommend it, because of the horrible AV-Test.org scores, but that’s just me.
The article goes on to state: “We still don’t recommend purchasing a paid antivirus because there are solid free options.”
Regarding Avast, they say “Unfortunately, [Avast is] heavier than MSE, its interface is more overbearing, and it tries to upsell you to a paid product you don’t really need”, but at that point in time they would recommend the older version they tested.
As to evaluating an Antivirus, they recommended consulting sites like AV-Test.org, where, as of this writing, Avast 2015 sits at #13 out of 28 products for protection, #18 out of 28 for performance, and #2 out of 28 for usability. Avast 2015 conclusion: Great usability, average protection, below-average performance.
I noticed that there are no Store tab in Windows XP.
Anyone who uses Windows XP: have you ever seen Store tab in avast 2015?