Some bad changes in Avast 5 - fix through an update possible?

[system]

I’ve been using Avast antivirus for over a year now, and I’ve been very pleased with it.

Of all the scanners I use, Avast is frequently the best at detecting and removing infections, in my experience.

However, I find myself very disappointed/frustrated with some of the changes in Avast 5, and I’m hoping that these issues can be addressed in an update.

By the way, I’m running Windows XP SP2.

1. There is no obvious way to close the program other than to go deep into the settings menu, uncheck “enable self-defense module,” and then to kill avastui.exe from the task manager.

In my opinion, that’s ridiculous. I know that Avast seems to be more and more geared toward the inexperienced PC user, and is getting all the more automated for it - but for those of us who just want to use Avast to scan for malware on an as-needed basis, the inability to close the program without terminating it from the task manager is a serious annoyance.

Avast 4.x let you just right-click on the taskbar icon and hit “exit” like any normal program. What the heck was wrong with that???

2. If you have shields/automatic updates/etc disabled - basically if you’re not making use of every piece of automated functionality found in Avast, the taskbar icon has a permanent, disparaging “x” on it. Also, when you open the UI under these conditions, it’s filled with dire, jarring warnings and big red x’s that make the interface very unpleasant to look at.

There should be an option to tell the program “Yeah, I know this and that is disabled because I have intentionally disabled x y and z because I don’t wish to use them,” so that you can disable ANYTHING about the program without it getting ugly and frightening looking.

There should be an option to disable/normalize such warnings for those of us who do not need them, including normalizing the taskbar icon when you have certain options turned off.

3. Disparity in reporting whether or not any “shields” are enabled.

I’ve turned all shields off. But when I right-click on the Avast task-bar icon and mouse to “avast shields control” it reports that all shields are on.

When I open the UI, I receive an “urgent” message at the bottom stating that shields are disabled, while at the top of the window in the status it reports them as on.

Given how little resources AvastUI.exe and AvastSvc.exe are using, it’s safe to say that the all the shielding functionality IS disabled, and there’s simply a bug in how it’s being reported (some parts of the program say they’re enabled, some say they’re not).

These are the problems I’ve encountered so far, and I haven’t explored that deeply into the program yet.

All that said, I think Avast is an awesome program, and I’d like to thank everyone who has put massive amounts of time and effort into making it as good as it is.

I just honestly believe that in Avast 5, regardless of what improvements may exist, several unnecessary and detrimental (to some) changes have been introduced, and I sincerely hope they can be remedied with an update.

Thank you.

[system]

1. There is no obvious way to close the program other than to go deep into the settings menu, uncheck "enable self-defense module," and then to kill avastui.exe from the task manager.

In my opinion, that’s ridiculous. I know that Avast seems to be more and more geared toward the inexperienced PC user, and is getting all the more automated for it - but for those of us who just want to use Avast to scan for malware on an as-needed basis, the inability to close the program without terminating it from the task manager is a serious annoyance.

are you an experienced user ? funny you didn’t get that the self defense module wasn’t meant to prevent the inexperienced user from disabling avast 5, but to prevent rogue software from doing it…this is called anti-termination protection

edit: and from what I heard a while ago, the implemented protection isn’t that strong, and I’d rather strengthen it with a HIPS, you know, a HIPS ;D
(edit: OUPS…HIPS…doesn’t work when attempting to protect avastsvc against termination, worked with any executable in V4)

[essexboy]

Have a look in the settings option - this is where you set the notifications for elements you are not actively using

[igor0]

@appleseed post:1

Avast 4.x let you just right-click on the taskbar icon and hit “exit” like any normal program. What the heck was wrong with that???

Wrong. There’s no “exit” in avast! 4 either - if you mean the “stop resident protection” option, it’s basically the same as “Disable all shields until computer is restarted” in avast! 5.

@appleseed post:1

There should be an option to tell the program “Yeah, I know this and that is disabled because I have intentionally disabled x y and z because I don’t wish to use them,” so that you can disable ANYTHING about the program without it getting ugly and frightening looking.

You can uninstall the particular shield(s) from avast!'s control panel applet.

@appleseed post:1

I’ve turned all shields off. But when I right-click on the Avast task-bar icon and mouse to “avast shields control” it reports that all shields are on.

Can’t reproduce that… how exactly did you turn the shields off?

[system]

@Logos:

Yes, I am an experienced user, and I’m aware of the intention behind the self-defense module.

Yes, I also know what a HIPS is. What I don’t know is what gives you the right to be so unnecessarily condescending.

And the self-defense module would not be an issue, if there existed a way to close the program without disabling it - and it does not appear that there is.

Trying to terminate AvastUI.exe from the task manager comes back with an “Access Denied” error if you do not disable the self-defense module, at least it did for me, and I believe this is the expected behavior.

Instead of taking unwarranted jabs at me, perhaps you should, you know, recognize that this is an actual problem for those of us who like to be able to close programs on our computer when they’re not in use.

@Essexboy: Thanks for the tip. I’d explored the settings menu thoroughly, and never saw that option.

So I decided to dig back into it, and for some reason, most of the options that show in your .png are not available on my installation, possibly due to what options I did/did not select when I initially installed the program.

The only options that show up for me under said menu are “virus definition version” “program version” and “definition auto updates”.

@igor: In Avast 4 - and I admit that I could be remembering this incorrectly - I believe I could close the program window and right click on the avast icon and hit “exit” to make it go away. I can’t verify this without uninstalling Avast 5/reinstalling Avast 4 though.

When I say I’ve “turned all shields off” I mean that when I installed avast I unchecked all of them, then right clicked on the Avast icon, navigated to avast! shields control and selected “disable permanently”.

[system]

Yes, I also know what a HIPS is. What I don't know is what gives you the right to be so unnecessarily condescending

your own tone and a natural behavior unfortunately ;D (read your first post here again)

And the self-defense module would not be an issue, if there existed a way to close the program without disabling it

oh yeah ? ::) and you'd still call it a self-defense module ? you think it can make the difference between a user's initiated action and a trojan's intervention?

[system]

I thought whatever negativity that existed in my post was rather well-balanced with praise and gratitude for the program.

If it didn’t come off that way to you, then I apologize. I really was not trying to be rude.

All I was saying about the self-defense module is that there should be a way to close Avast. That’s it.

I’m not saying the self-defense module should be able to differentiate between what a user consciously does and what a trojan does.

I just loaded up Avast 4 on another computer, and you could close the program.

And by close, I mean close the window/kill the taskbar icon so that no visible remnants remain of it onscreen, and if you open task manager, all you have running from Avast are a couple services.

…Which you could stop/set to manual, so that you wouldn’t need to have even them running in the background unless you needed to start them to do a scan with Avast. They’d always get set back to automatic after an Avast update, but you could just turn them back off/set to manual again.

If you could completely terminate Avast 4 without too much hassle (and it wasn’t too much hassle, in my opinion), it seems that the same should be possible in 5.

It’s a strike against 5 (in my personal opinion) that such doesn’t appear to be possible without killing AvastUI.exe from the task manager, that’s all.

I wasn’t coming into this forum to say “I’m on the internet! I’m accustomed to getting all this great free software, and I expect it to work to MY specifications!!! BWAHHHH!”

…Not like that, at all.

I was just saying that I feel like some apparent changes from 4 are not necessarily positive for all of your users, myself included, and that perhaps modifications could be made to accommodate them. I’m not demanding or pretending that I’m entitled. I use the free version, for God’s sake.

I sincerely apologize if I did so in a way that you found offensive.

[system]

it’s OK, np, forget it now …the thing is that I’ve been trying to get the opposite, like make it as hard as possible to be terminated. And I used a HIPS (Comodo Def+) on avast 4 main processes, and it worked really fine. The thing is now that there’s a self-defense module this shouldn’t be necessary anymore. But someone, a while ago, described how he could circumvent that, so I tried to protect avast 5 with my HIPS again, and it doesn’t work. Avast services should become impossible to be stopped manually and I can still stop them. By the way the self defense module doesn’t prevent that either, not even a password (if set) is asked, just a confirmation. So you can always do it that way if you judge it necessary.