This morning, shortly after starting my PC, I got a popup saying something like “Avast has just been updated to the latest version, you need to restart the PC”.
Which I didn’t like at all, since I had carefully set the program updates to “manual” because I want no automatic program updates whatsoever on my PC.
I know many think it’s a dangerous mistake, but it’s okay with me. I think I’m aware of the risks involved in occasional and “delayed” manual software upgrades and, also, of the risks involved in frequent automatic upgrades.
My choice may be wrong, but (I think) it’s legitimate as long as it concerns my own PC; it comes from my experience and from the comparison of the above mentioned risks.
So two questions arise:
Why did the program upgrade itself without any preceding request or warning, despite automatic updates being explicitly disabled?
How can automatic/unattended updates be completely, definitely disabled?
PS. I remember something similar (sudden upgrade with no prior notification) happening also in the past, with Avast 20.1
(https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=232420.msg1538013#msg1538013)
On that occasion I received a kind answer/hint from a forum moderator who wrote: “It has been caused by the fact that we haven’t released new version that long, that’s why program updates itself. It doesn’t update only when you have set it to Manual updates.”
So this time the program was actually set to “Manual updates”. To no avail, it seems.
Thanks for your answer.
I forgot to mention that I’m on Avast Free Antivirus.
The option “Send logs to our support team” is not present in my “Settings > Troubleshooting” dialog.
Anyway, shall I deduce from your answer that Avast should never update automatically when set to “manual upgrade” ?
Or is it actually intended/expected, in certain circumstances, to behave like that?
I haven’t experienced any automated program update (a couple of others have reported this in the Forums) since I have this option set to Manual Program Update and I’m still on Avast Free 22.1.2504 and not the latest version 22.2.xxxx.
In the Troubleshooting section of 22.1.2504 there is ‘Record a performance problem’ and Open Recorder, my guess this is a new/changed terminology. You could try that and see if it does the task.
Please follow the instructions (download and run the Avast Support tool) in this guide https://support.avast.com/article/Submit-support-file, and provide us with the support file ID. Our developers can then look into this issue.
Just a (probably unnecessary) question:
does the Avast Support tool perform any potentially “permanent” action on the system (software installation, registry modification…) or is it a stand-alone program that once executed and closed leaves no trace of itself?