My desktop/main computer runs with Avast 12 free as long as the many problems with v.17 reported are not solved. During the last week the system (Win7/64) tends to freeze and/or the Avast GUI doesn’t start when I click at the icon. Never occured before. Only solution is to restart the computer. Strange.
Second system is a notebook (Win10/32), as my backup computer. On that system I run Avast 12 free only once a month or so, as it contains only copies of the main computer. Just today I recocnize that four weeks ago Avast was upgraded to V.17 - with out my coopereation and without my knowledge.
I remember some error messages at that day.
I don’t know exakctly what happens here but this makes me incesure. A hidden change of my malware software? Strange behaviour from a stable version?
I am not far from deactivating Avast and try Windows Defender.
Program updates, have for some time have been set to Auto update in the same way as the VPS updates. So I can only assume that because you use this system infrequently you didn’t notice the change in avast settings.
The settings for program updates can be modified and set back to Ask and future program updates would honour that setting. I’m using my windows 10 laptop for this post and that is still using 12.3.2280, if I look at Avast Settings > Update it tells me that there is a new version of the program is available, version 17.2.2288.
As far as I’m aware it may have been early 12.x that this changed, but why you got 17,x installed with the settings still at manual is beyond my understanding of what was meant to have happened.
I’m not experiencing any instability on the one system (in my signature) that I have 17.2.2288 installed on. Though there are going to be may tens of thousands of system permutations and installed software running. On that XP system (and my others) I’m very tight on what I install and more so on what I allow to run in the background.