Hello.
I often disable Avast! and other background applications while playing games (because I allways want to avoid any possible conflicts, that may occur). My question is: can I get a virus if I play games without internet connection? I play games like “Call of Duty”, “Mass Effect”, and so on (Trusted games, not pirated)… Should I clean Web Cache, Temp Files or other things before disabling Avast? Can malware detect that Avast! is disabled and then infect my PC at any time?
Although not impossible, it’s highly unlikely that a game that is known to be clean will cause any infection, especially without being connected to the internet.
[QUOTE]Can malware detect that Avast! is disabled and then infect my PC at any time?
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If a program can detect what software is running on your computer, it’s already infected you. So, if your computer is clean, this isn’t possible (again, unless you’re already infected, which makes the whole issue moot).
Also, you can leave avast on and just turn on the Gaming Mode in the Summary Page so that it won’t interfere with gaming.
Although there is the gaming mode, I have never used it as I have never needed it. If I am going to play an offline game, I disconnect from the internet, but leave everything else running. IF I ever had issue, I would try the gaming mode first, and then try turning it off last; but avast! seems to get along with the games that I play (AVG and Norton didn’t). I mostly play rgp games (Oblivion lately), none have had issue thus far. So I wonder if turning avast! off is necessary at all? Have you tried playing your games with it on? have you tried the gaming mode? It can’t hurt to play-test, can it? Make a backup save-game before play-testing, and don’t be attached to what you accomplish during a play-test session, just in case it isn’t a successful session, of course. Happy Gaming! ~Nom
When you say “backup savegame”, you mean that AV can corrupt savegames? I think that when playing games with AV enabled sometimes can occur errors (or something like that), that can corrupt savegames. For example, if I play Fallout 3, which have very long gameplay (many hours of playing), and if something goes wrong (information is saved incorrectly in savegame), it can result in crashes (or something similar) in the future (and it would ruin the entire game). On the other hand, maybe I’m wrong, it’s just my opinion… 
My question is: can I get a virus if I play games without internet connection?
no ;D
Playing offline and online with avast! AIS always turned on and i don’t see any problems. Have never had avast! crash my game or corrupt a save file or anything like that(infact it has never happened to me in more than 15 yrs of gaming). Don’t notice any performance improvement by turning avast! off either. IMHO there is no need to turn avast! off at all, should be up and running at all times.
Steam recommends to turn off Antivirus protection while gaming ( Link: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6057-YLBN-1660 ). And I also heard that AV can cause crash when running, for example, Source Engine games (Left 4 Dead, Half-Life …). So why even Steam recommends that?
Why ? They seem to think AV’s take up so much resources that games cannot run in parallel with them(the solution would be to get more ram or increase the page file not to turn the AV off if you’re running out of resources). Never heard of such a bad AV that would cause games to crash and if someone does have such an AV i’d say it’s time for an AV change. I understand if someone disables their firewall when online gaming and it is badly messing with their latency(been there done that and changed the FW) but disabling an AV is something that i feel just shouldn’t be done under any normal circumstances. Besides avast! is so light on resources and has the gaming mode even so i really don’t see what you would gain by turning it off. Why don’t you try it for yourself and see how much FPS you gain by turning it off. I can tell you how much i gain. Zero.
And those people at Steam should know better than to give LAME advice like that ESPECIALLY considering Steam is an ONLINE application which is constantly downloading something(game files, game ads etc.) to your pc. I don’t trust them enough so those files at least on my pc will always get scanned. Not that i will ever use Steam cause i hate it. ;D
EDIT: Should’ve mentioned that Steam uses IE to display web content. Nuff said…
played CSS a few minutes earlier today, with Avast running in gaming mode, no problem ???
So why even Steam recommends that?have your own experience, and forget what they say ::)
Hi xkyborg,
The practices that you inform us about here can be classified as contradictory to SafeHex. Yes there are users, mostly ill-informed or just out of over-confidence or bravura fed or just to copy behavior of other ill-informed users that like to surf the Internet/Intranet at times without protection, they can encounter the full impact of malcoded script, drive-by-downloads, and do not need a very long time to continue these practices to turn their gaming machine into a virtual machine that can only be used as a doorstopper.
To do it completely wrong or not as it is advised here - you do not upgrade and patch, you do not use a firewall, do not use an av- anti malware tool all of the time, you do not use software or tools to hide your tracks from those that frown upon your Internet habits.
I know similar people that say using a computer out of the box is just fine, all other protective measures take the fun out of going out on the Internet or using a computer as such offline, using a program with just user rights to see that malware does not have a free ride into the operational system is just nonsense, disabling the webshields is good because it may hamper your online experience, and more of these wrong informed methods.
We have found that people that do the above are just misinformed, I established that after over 10.000 anti-malware postings,
polonus
Sorry, my English is not very good… So, as I understood, you say that it is better do not disable AV even while playing offline (because my PC still can be vulnerable)?