I’m glad to announce the general availability of avast 5.1. After almost a month-long beta testing marathon (and 3 beta refreshes just in the last 24 hours), I sincerely hope this new version will serve you well. Even though avast 6.0, equipped with even more features, is coming relatively soon, v5.1 is still a very important update for us. Most of the new good stuff is hidden under the hood.
The most notable improvements are:
boot-time scanner now available even in 64-bit Windows
big improvements in the Behavior Shield
improvements in the antirootkit engine
improvements in the cleaning module
stability/performance improvements in the Web Shield
CommunityIQ improvements
added support for sound packs
minor improvements in the user interface
minor fixes in the firewall
I’d also like to take this opportunity and thank all our beta-testers for a job well done. Without you, we couldn’t make this happen.
BTW it takes a few days for download.com (and other local download servers) to update their bits. If you want to download the full installer now, use the following direct links:
This has actually nothing to do with the program itself, all the related code is contained in the virus definitions, i.e. it would be modified in a virus database update. However, I’m not saying it will be… basically the file is compressed by an unknown (or more precisely, non-public, non-standard, private-version of) cryptor, and since it’s not that widespread, it doesn’t really have priority, sorry.
On the other hand, if it’s caused by some antidebugging trick (and not by the fact that the file simply takes too long to process because it’s so thoroughly crypted), it’s possible that it will be solved by an unrelated engine update.
just wanted to add one thing, you guys have been working on this new year’s eve, the whole day, evening and part of the night to provide us with this final version, correcting bugs and making new builds hour after hour : respect and congrats guys, and happy new year again
