I downloaded and ran 4.8 Home for the first time today. Along the way, I came back to find that when a virus notice came up, the scan paused. So I checked “don’t show this dialogue next time” and processing continued through the virus finds (mostly variants of the same false positive - reported). My first question is, are there basically only two choices, stop and wait for the user vs. continue on w/o find notices until the end and then deal with the Chest? Also is there a way to make this choice in the settings? I didn’t find answers for these in the manual.
Looking in the Virus Chest, I was surprised find Win XP’s winsock.dll, wsock.dll and kernal32.dll (System32 folder), none with a specific virus designated. What are they doing there then? Thanks.
In Home version you can check the option “Don’t show this window again” as soon as the first virus warning appears, and click on “No action” button. This way, nothing will be done and you will be presented the results at the end (and you can perform actions from there).
Well, that’s the way it is, I am afraid; you may call it a limitation of the Home Edition of avast!. In the Professional Edition, you can configure the task to perform automatic actions (or, don’t do anything).
In the Home version, you may check the “Don’t show again” checkbox in the Virus warning dialog - but only after the first virus has been found (because you won’t see the virus dialog until then).
That files are there for backup purposes. Look, they’re on system folder of the Chest, not the infected one.
Thanks for the clarification. Different companies handle the break between free and paid versions differently, tho charging $40 for being able to walk away from one’s computer draws the line rather sharply and is quite uncommon.
If you follow the advice suggested by Tech you can up to a point walk away and come back to the list of files found infected (don’t confuse this with files that can’t be scanned).
I will expand on that a little:
In the Home version you can check the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. This way, no action will be taken and you will given the results at the end of the scan (and you can perform actions from there). Over time this will become less of an issue, as the resident, on-access scanners are designed to intercept infection before it gets into your system.
There was one suggestion to place something like the eicar virus test file at the start of the first drive to be scanned in a file like ~a-eicar.com that should soon be detected and you can do the option “Don’t show this window again” when the first virus warning appears, select the “No action” button. So you should have a list of files waiting your action.
tho charging $40 for being able to walk away from one's computer draws the line rather sharply and is quite uncommon.
I hope you’re not suggesting avast should start charging for Home edition!
Could you perhaps provide ID detection indicators of ‘same false positives’ for the forum, so that we have something to reference when other newbs post in their alerts, in case they post in same ID detection indicators, and perhaps save us time in our work following up and identifying cause of alerts.
And post IDs of others that were not ‘mostly variants of same’ would help also.
If ID of malware includes site address in definition please change http to hxxp in order to de-activate the live link. This prevents accidental clicking through to sites that may be infected.
It isn’t charging for the home version, the $40 dollars referred to is the cost of switching to the pro version ($39.99 I believe) so as not to have the interactive requirement of the home version upon detections.
Sorry DavidR, I wasn’t making myself clear enough. As you can see I have edited my post. I think $39.99 is an exceptionally good buy for the Pro version. Now is certainly the time to buy.
Regards.
Sorry, could’nt help myself but reply to earlier post somewhat putting avast effectiveness down. I’m tired, turning in for the night, as I’ve been battling with .NET all night. I have an app that needs the net framework for to run well each time it is used.
[off topic]
Ahh .net public enemy no one on my system, the update fail with monotonous regularity and never was able to get beyond 1.1 and there is no way I can download the huge updates for version 3.0+ on dial-up, with no guarantee that the update will work.
I have 1 program (my disk imaging software) which requires 1.0 and if I didn’t have that .net wouldn’t be on my system at all.
[/off topic]
avast is now I believe the third A-V I’ve tried, leaving aside Norton several years ago. With each I’ve been asking myself whether or not this is the one I want to take the pro version on. That the “continue” can’t be set automatically - or avast doesn’t continue on with multiple pop-ups instead - is quite inconvenient. It strikes me that there are better (and more common) ways to differentiate versions than directly annoying the user. I’m not sure what you mean by exceptionally good buy; see, e.g., the two reports at http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests.
Thanks for the discussion reference. I wasn’t suggesting avast is worse than others in the top ranks, but replying to the ‘exceptional deal’ comment. Those interested can compare features, performance and prices.
To repeat, there’s no beef with differentiating the pro version from the free one, so the developers can be paid and the owners can have their profit (sector average?). The beef is with the way avast has chosen to do it. It, in effect, confronts the user with a choice: either buy the pro version or be more or less seriously inconvenienced. Is treating customers that way really been a successful sales driver? I could be wrong, as I haven’t studied your market, but I suspect a “no” to that question is why your competitors have chosen other ways to make the pro vs. free difference.
–My guess–
I think Alwil have decided on this method because it allows the users of the free version to have almost all of the protection layers in the pro version and have chosen the few things that don’t have as much of an impact on the protection of the user.(excluding the script blocker)
The only differences are more user orientated things (tasks, UI, automation etc), whereas the similar comparison to another AV, for example AVG, the extra, paid for things have more of a protection difference.
This is only my guess though so I could be very wrong
