I'm sticking with Avast and here's why...

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
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Hi all,
I’ve been reading how unhappy so many are with what happened yesterday and how it affected them and their computers and I agree that it caused a major interruption in most of our daily activities as we all went into panic mode trying to figure out “OMG…what’s wrong with my computer??”
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…only to find out it was the result of an Avast glitch that sent out those false positives.

My first thought, like many of you in a state of frustration and disappointment, was to immediately abandon Avast for some other AV program. But once I figured out what was going on and came to these forums seeking answers, I found, to my relief, Avast was attempting to respond with a solution as quickly as humanly possible. AND, they admitted they were in error and apologized for the inconvenience as they formulated a fix that was then sent out and made available in their updated VPS version: 091203-1.

This update performed the necessary repair and, speaking for myself at least, in a relatively short time I had my computer back to the working state it was before the previous VPS version: 091203-0 did the damage.

I believe in second chances. We see it so much where many of our sports heroes, celebrities and politicians screw up but then are given that second chance to make things right again with promises that whatever their grievous offense was, they would take the necessary steps to ensure it would never happen again.

I’ve been very happy with Avast for a few years now as it has worked well keeping my computer safe from virus and malware attacks and I’m not going to let this one human error, this one screw-up (yeah, let’s call it what it is) make me give up on them now. I have to think they’ve learned a lesson with this unfortunate and untimely event and will strive to take those necessary steps to ensure it can’t and won’t happen again.

That’s just my opinion as I sit here at my computer patiently waiting for that reassuring voice to once again inform me:
“Your virus database has been updated!”.

Cheers and best regards from the land of the second chance.
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Hi Telstar,

And right you are. You can bet that the avast people have learned lots from this incident, and incidents happen, because without incidents there would not be any progression. In the long run the whole of the avast community will profit, because the evaluation of it will offer us more protection and a more aware community which will be educated better how to handle these incidents.

A few rules in forecoming cases:

  1. Never ever panic and sit out the ride…there always will be a next update to cure, and a way to restore to a well functioning comp.
  2. Never delete in the wild files that can be critical for your OS to run, always check on things that happen - check, use an alternative non-resident scanner, upload to virustotal, move to the chest from where you can restore. Look to keep all options open…
  3. Make an image back-up of your machine, your critical files and registry at regular intervals.
  4. Contact the support forums and ask for help to evaluate the situation and some sound advice.
  5. Go on and further use this rather unique av solution,

polonus

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I agree. Avast always worked for me. The issue was fixed fast, and it’s not like this problem happens all the time. Also, i knew from the start i wasnt infected, so i didnt delete or quarantine anything, but i guess that if i would have messed my OS and work softwares while in a work rush, i would probably ventilate my anger by choosing another anti-virus software.

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Some people experienced worse problems. In my case, my laptop wouldn’t load my desktop…just stalled out after the wallpaper loaded and didn’t display the icons. Took me nearly 3 hours to discover that Avast was the source of the problem. That’s not an insignificant amount of time, in fact, it’s probably the most time I’ve spent trying to resolve a computer related issue in recent memory. Can’t say I’m moving on, but I’m certainly going to try some alternatives at this point.

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I’ll be sticking with Avast - but only because it’s 2.25 am in the UK - I’m off on Holiday at 9.00am, I’ve finally managed to get my daughters lappy rebooted following the false positive debacle and I don’t have time to find an alternative.

I will be keeping my head low when I’m back at work and hope that no one I recommended Avast to has suffered like me. I’ll definitely not be recommending Avast in future even if I stick with it post-holiday…

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hell… wombat, how many cock up’s have Microsoft made over the years…so why are you still with them?

yes it has caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, got sorted mega quick, but in 5 years with avast i would not change…do you not make mistakes???

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I’m not going anywhere. Telstar covered all the major points. I appreciate the fact that people were here on the forum patiently taking hits and giving advice throughout.

One suggestion I would make, and I’m not sure this is the place, would be to have Avast! keep the old database handy when it updates to a new database. Waiting for the fix was not too much of a problem for me, but it would have been nice to roll back to a slightly out-of-date but properly functioning database rather than to respond to false positives for a few hours waiting for the fix.

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Hey, what the the heck , I love all the practice of reformatting. Ha,Ha,Ha, Just Kidding, Avast has best response time out there. mistake or not, I’m not giving up Avast they will have to pry every last byte of it off my Computer. These folks care about their customers and i see that everyday at these forums they are dedicated and watch our backs.

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totally agree and what other free av gives the members the support that avast does…and a damn good forum too :slight_smile:

have been helped so many times and have been learned a lot :slight_smile:

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This is my first time to post here in the Forum of Avast. And I guess this happened after the bad update yesterday. It got me into thinking what are my best options. Sorry if I will be mentioning some products which are competitors of Avast in some respects. I am not yet all too familiar with the rules here (although this is not an excuse considering I am a moderator in my ISP’s subscriber forum board). At any rate, I know the moderators will edit it as they please.

The bottom line: Avast still gives protection comparable to the paid AVs that we NET-izens should avail of and take advantage.

With the bad update, it got me to thinking what are my real alternatives to Avast. I can’t compromise protection but neither should I pay for it since I don’t use my PC for any money making endeavors. It is the home users that are the REAL victims here since we are caught in between the cross fire of people who make money over the web (which is a very good way to earn one’s keep), and those who are after to steal money or simply to wreak havoc on everyone. Except for credit card info, email usernames and passwords, and other stuff, basically, most home users don’t have anything worth to a cyber criminal (I guess some people are just born to cause headaches to other people). Yet we get viruses and bad software from the internet. Thanks to Avast for providing their software free for home users.

I can’t compromise security. Thus, I checked what paid anti viruses offer that supposed Free AVs can’t offer. ESET, Kaspersky, and many others do offer scanning of web pages, messaging, peer to peer connections scanning, and a whole lot more. However, among the top free AVs (Avira, Avast, and AVG) only Avast can cover almost everything. In fact the Free Version is ALMOST the same as the Pro. I would understand the difference since a business enterprise has more needs compared to a home user like me. I have tried Avira’s Antivir Personal and I feel inadequate with the protection they provide. Not to mention that they have very slow update servers, which can come to a standing halt on hours, but I heard they fixed this already. I have seen how AVG failed in many Internet shops here that use their product, specially the free version. I don’t own an internet cafe, but back when I didn’t have a home internet connection and had to rely on net cafes, I did see a lot of PCs being infected by a lot of bad software (I know because a friend who owns one even asked my help to repair some of his PCs in his net cafe). This is not to put a bad name on AVG but it was just what I saw with their product.

And for a free AV, they were actually fast in coming up with an update that fixed the bad update.

After what happened with the bad update, I am still with Avast. It is still the most comprehensive AV protection that one can have. For a free product, it definitely tops the rest. Prevention is still best compared to curing it. And Avast covers that for a free product. I don’t believe there is anything that is free. As free users do their share of submitting files reported as false positives, giving feedback, and this is what I do when I see problems with the free software that I use. But to short change them (for the free version) when the info provided works well for the company, I guess this is what made me believe in Avast. Their free product is as good as the Pro. And this is coming from someone who have tested the free AVs by experience. At least for me, this is what I have seen and experienced. Just sharing… I hope people won’t mind.

Mikos

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I was lucky, I didn’t get the offending update; I might feel differently if I had. But I like the way Alwil have handled it. They took responsibility right away and fixed it rather than dither around looking for someone or something else to blame. :wink:

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“Your virus database has been updated!”.

That’s music to my ears.

I’m going to miss his voice on Version 5. :cry:

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Well said, Telstar. I too will stick with Avast! Have had it for years and it has done well for me.

ps…do we have to upgrade to V.5?
Do we have a choice?

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Hi all, gotta agree, I manage 450 users, clean up time was less than 1 hour this morning. Avast has got me out of trouble many more times that it has got me into trouble, I remember once submitting a vbs script that was starting to take off on our network and update came about 2 hours later that killed it cold. All in all Avast has worked very very well for us, when other sites have gone down for so and so a virus we have been fine. I hope this doesn’t happen again but I hold no grudges.

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I will be staying with Avast…which I have run for about five years without problem ( I managed to avoid yesterday’s debacle).

I judge people and organisations not by the mistakes they make ( and everybody errs from time to time)…but by the manner in which they rectify the situation…and Avast is very good at that.

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forgive me but i will move to…
the kitchen ,make some tea ,drink it,and laugh on the other security vendors who think we will leave avast
avast is the best now yesterday in the future,at all time.go avast we all with you.

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V4.8 will be supported through 2010 but that’s because there are many Win98/ME users still.

You have a choice and you can make that decision when V5 becomes available in January 2010.

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Thank you for the info, YK.

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I’m new here also. The major panic of yesterday brought me here. I must say that I have been using Avast for a few years now and I still (after a terrible experience yesterday) will be using Avast. It has proved itself over and over again as being a great avs! I do wish that I would have came here first instead of trying to fix my pc on my own, then maybe I wouldn’t have lost over 700 files, but that’s in the past now. Time to move on with Avast!

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[b]I do wish that I would have came here first instead of trying to fix my pc on my own, then maybe I wouldn't have lost over 700 files, but that's in the past now. Time to move on with Avast![/b]

To many of us users, as well as the developers of Avast, this recent experience with the false positives has taught us many things about how to react to the unfortunate but highly unlikely possibility of a repeat event sometime in the future. The Avast developers obviously already knew to act quickly and decisively in formulating a fix when they discovered their error, and as we found out, the update to repair the issue was being distributed within hours of discovery.

For me personally, I know enough now that in the future whenever I receive a string or series of malware alerts such as the ones for Win32:Delf-MZG and Win32:Zbot-MKK to come to these forums first before doing anything rash.

After the second Trojan alert I received I became suspicious enough to Google “Win32:Delf-MZG”…first of all to find out what kind of threat it was but instead immediately saw an overwhelming number of computer users posting at various tech and security sites inquiring about the same thing and this then prompted me to come to these Avast Forums. It took a while before I could gain entrance due I suppose to the ever-increasing numbers of Avast users also looking for answers but, once here, I found the problem first of all was NOT with me or my computer but with the recent 091203-0 update containing the FP’s we had all received. In a short time I had answers and a solution once the new updated VPS version 091203-1 was issued.

So, lesson learned…don’t panic. Just come to these Forums before over-reacting as many of us did in the beginning and you might find you’re in the good company of many other Avast users finding themselves in the same predicament and, as we found out with this recent event, we will work together as we listen to the progress of the developers as they endeavor to find and distribute a solution.

Today, with a sense of relief that this is all behind us, I can now relax and get back to the enjoyment of my computer experience knowing full well that Avast is once again on-guard protecting me from “real” threats out there just looking for the opportunity to invade my system.

Good day everyone!

and as far as I’m concerned, my opinion hasn’t changed one iota…

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AVAST still rocks!
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