I had to reinstall (uninstall/cleanup/new installation) Avast Free because it was nearly unusable because of a slow UI and UI freezes. Now after the reinstalltion that problem is gone but whats also gone is the possibility to open the old settings. In search it finds ‘Troubleshooting > Open old settings’ but on the Troubleshooting view the option to open the ‘Old Settings’ doesn’t appear. There is simply no way to open the old settings, although the search says its there. Is that a bug only I experience or is that an issue of the newest release? I need the old settings to either export the E-Mail SSL-certificate or disable SSL scanning because my email client annoys me with repeating certificate confirmation popups.
I have replied to your other link, it could be not using notepad for the modification.
I honestly have to wonder what all this cr4p is about hiding setting, making it difficult to damn near impossible to access them. Requiring the user to make an edit to the .ini file or the bloody secret handshake club (not publisled anywhere the user is likely to find it). Avast used to be the most configurable antivirus out there and one of the very reasons I changed to Avast almost 16 years ago.
Why not just make a statement ‘Changing the default settings could seriously impact performance/protection’ do so at your own risk, but before doing so backup your settings should you need to revert, etc.
What the hell are Avast so frightened about in allowing (NOT) users to change settings ?
I don’t see the forums swamped with users having messed things up (in all this time) by changes they have made to the default settings
It’s now there again. Must have been updated yesterday, since I didn’t change the config file like recommended above.
Anyway I wonder how they will fit in the old settings into the new settings when they remove, as they mentioned, the old settings in version 20.3 or 20.4.
The geek area seems promising, since I was not aware it exists. I tried now it but it seems also a little bit buggy. The search doesn’t work there and if I close the geek area and try to open the settings again, the settings indeed open but without content and Avast freezes so I have to close the window over the taskbar and open the Avast window again
Yes Petr has put the “Old Settings” link back for now, so was able to verify my settings were rolled over OK to new version 20. That was not possible from the standard UI or geek:area menus.
I have just emailed Petr with a screenshot of Action settings I would expect to see in the UI or at least accessible via geek:area.
If anyone else has reservations about settings oversimplified or missing from new UI, then please do take up Petr’s offer to email him screenshots.
If Avast are not informed of what seetings outside the standard UI menu’s people need, then they will assume all is well with their current UI setup. So do spend a bit of time and email him, so we may see some improvements.
I fully agree with DavidR - why make it so difficult to change settings that are in many cases quite harmless? In my case I just wanted to enable firewall blocked packets logging - not a particularly dangerous or “geeky” setting, and on a par with “Enable Automatic Port Scan Detection”, which is still exposed by the new UI. Hiding too many settings makes it very hard to diagnose problems.
I also was not aware of the geek:area until now. Why not make this more clearly available, eg via an “Advanced”/“Expert”/“Debugging” menu with the sort of warning that DavidR suggests. In my experience, anyone that knows they need access to such advanced settings has at least some understanding of the potential consequences of changing them.
+1 especially since there are still some main settings that can still ruin everything or waste a lot of time, I’m thinking of (unrecoverable) files in the virus chest or a lost password.
I would find it more legitimate for avast to focus on program updates that often go wrong.
If the geek:area was better organised, comprehensive and contained full set of “Old Settings”, then I would be more happy and feel in control.
Going down the one size fits all and dumbing down the UI is a bad move IMO and I agree with other posters who have also stated that here.
Come on Avast, I know you can do better than this.