I have a primary operating system where avast is allways up to date and i never have any problems with,
then i have a secondary OS that i use to try new things, beta software, infect with virii and just generally wreak havoc on, when this secondary OS is beyond repair i restore it from an image, leaving avast quite out of date needing 20mb of updates and growing.
Both of these OS’s are the same version of xp pro on seperate hard drives running on one machine so both are never running at the same time.
When i last re-imaged i copied the entire Avast4 directory from my primary OS to my secondary OS hoping i would not need to download the updates, this idea did not work avast still wants to update the virus database.
Just for your interest the on access protection settings changed to be the same as the ones on my primary OS on the secondary OS i run everything on lowest settings and have many of them off completely.
I have quite a slow mobile connection and this is why i am looking for a way to not have to do a major update some times weekly.
Does anyone know how to update the older re-imaged avast using the files from my allways up to date avast?
What files am i looking for and what directories are they in?
Is there anything else i need to know, something i am missing?
Thank you in advance for any assistance given.
Klyntone
This wouldn’t deal with any program updates but you could try this copy file to USB and transfer to old system.
By all accounts you don’t need to copy the clnr0.dll. However, you would bump into the self-defence module and you would need to disable that first, Program Settings, Troubleshooting, Disable avast self-defence module, don’t forget to enable it after.
An off-topic observation: this approach is not secure unless you physically disconnect the “primary” disk while running the OS on the “secondary” disk. That is, malware running on the “primary” OS can infect files on the “secondary” disk, and, indeed, on any storage media to which the system has access.
Zerospam - I have thought of this also and on the system i mess with i have used gpedit to hide and restrict access to my primary drive and am regularly making up to date images of primary OS as a matter of course anyway. All data is held on external HDD which i make sure to unplug, hopefully that is enough, thank you though it is good to know people are paying attention.
DavidR - After i copied the avast directory from my primary os to my secondary os (this is done while secondary os is not operating) I to found avast! showed signature date identical to the one on host system and i was informed that database was up to date when i tried to execute current vpsupd.exe but when i go to settings>update>update now avast! is still connecting to update server and starting the download, one day i will let it complete just to see what happens at the end. At this point i am assuming everything except the aswUpdSv.exe recognises that the database is up to date. I think next time i will try as you have done and only copy the two files you mentioned and see if that works better.
Lex - let me rephrase the question, can i use the definitions from an up to date avast to copy and paste into avast on another computer to bring it up to date thus only having to download the updates once for two machines.