How to use Avast without inserting its hooks everywhere?

I’d like to try Avast, but there’s no way I’m going to uninstall my current antivirus to do that. I don’t want an install that starts up during the boot and puts hooks into my browser, internet connections, file access, etc. I just want to be able to say, “Scan this file”, or “Scan this directory”, and see the results. Can I do that?

No, avast! is no on-demand scanner.
asyn

you need to get an extra computer to do experiment with :wink:

You’re losing avast eh eh ;D
Why don’t you just uninstall the other antivirus? :wink:

You could try it in a virtual machine(VM) which is probably the easiest and cleanest way. If you’re not familiar with a virtual machine just google it and read up on it.

Uh…what is your “other” anti-virus?
Avast is a solid av. I have tried other av’s and found Avast outperformed each of the others. Avast is very user friendly and you can set it up your way or keep the defaults. I use default and a custom scan and I can select individual folders to be scanned. The Behavior Shields are added feature that makes Avast that much more unique.

In short…with Avast you can scan individual folders! You don’t have to use the boot-time scan if you don’t want to.

Wow - so nobody at Avast realizes that not providing the ability to try your software, without removing my existing software first, is a major problem with their software?

I have a big directory full of software with viruses, and I can quickly test antivirus software by letting it scan that directory and see how much it picks up. Or could, if I could install it without removing my other software.

I appreciate the advice to use a virtual machine, but it’s not practical for everyday use.
If I have software I want to scan specially, I want to scan it with as many antivirus products as possible. Booting up a separate virtual machine for each antivirus program is ridiculous.
Nor can I usually boot up a virtual machine, as WinXP only lets me use 3GB of RAM, and I am often using moat of it.

(BTW, every antivirus scanner on the market today lets you scan individual folders. This is not a feature unique to Avast.)

It is the same for all realtime av’s, you need to remove the one you have first before installing the new otherwise there will be conflicks, this is common knowledge and how avast is designed not a software flaw.

Well, you hardly present as a standard user with standard needs, which is what Avast! is pitched towards, what with your “huge directory of viruses”, so I doubt they would consider it a “huge” problem.

Fishy needs you have, btw. A collection of viruses that you wish to scan with as many scanners as possible, to what end? To see which ones escape detection, so you know which to use? :wink:

If you’re actually serious, which I doubt you are, you could try on-demand scanners that don’t have on-access like Malwarebytes, SUPERAntiSpyware, Prevx, or HitmanPro.

Take off ur Antivirus… or put off all ur antivirus shields or in “real time”, and then i think will not be a problem to install avast…

But i am only a user, not technic

Download ClamAV and stop wasting our time.

If you only want to run a scan on something when you want to, you need an Anti-virus that doesn’t scan for you.

No, it certainly isn’t a major problem. avast! is designed to protect users - changing the design to help a few “testers”… would be rather ridiculous.

Even if you removed avast! system-wide components manually (and still managed to keep avast! functional) - it’s not a good idea anyway. First, by removing those part, you block avast! from accessing various information - affecting its detection capabilities. Second - scanning, even if on-demand, in the presence of another active antivirus is going to cause a conflict sooner or later (such as the other antivirus blocking temporary files being created by the first one, e.g. to unpack archives - again, possibly reducing the manifested detection capabilities again).

So, if you just want to know what to think about a particular file, I’d suggest services like VirusTotal.
If you want a comparison test, then either check the reliable ones (which also have the advantage of a reasonably decent sample set, which is the most important and the most tricky part in testing), or try to do it correctly, without creating a scenario having little in common with a real installed antivirus.

If your complaining about Avast’s “hooks”, install NIS 2011 and see what it does to your installation. For starters, it changes your registry permissions. That is real fun when your trying to manually edit your registry!