This may be in the “if it ain’t broke” category.
Or it may be in the “living on borrowed time.”
I have a modem that usually runs at about 31.2 kbps and, until very recently, this phone connection was my only one for all the things uses phones for.
Downloads of any kind in the millions are SLOW.
So I have neglected to upate to avast! 6 and have ignored all the daily Windows announcements.
I am current on avast! defintions.
I was getting ready to have my daughter-in-law (with high speed access) download 6 for me as she did 5.
Then I find I have Service Pack 3 and need SP4 for avast! 6.
So I am in the hundreds of millions of bytes and maybe dozens of hours of download behind.
BUT, things seem to be working pretty well all around and I would love to just keep going unless the whole thing is about to come down around me.
In all honesty you should continue with the auto updates for the virus definitions as those are incremental and should be in the region of 25-200KB so manageable for even dial-up (which I had up until 15 months ago). By leaving it so long you are making the problem worse.
Windows updates are your most pressing issue as they aren’t getting any smaller.
You don’t say what OS you have but I’m guessing win2000 by your mention of SP4, if so you don’t only need SP4 but also the rollup1 update also.
So you need to have your daughter-in-law get win2k SP4 and rollup1. I would hold fire on avast6 for the moment as avast7 is now in public beta testing and hopefully it shouldn’t be too long before that is released, so you won’t have to repeat the exercise.
Just an addition to what David said. You should update first to SP4, reboot, and only then apply UR1 and reboot again. It is recommended to have both (SP4 and UR1), independently of using avast 6 or not.
You can download the installers gor SP4 and UR1 using some broadband connection and then take the installers with you to apply them on your system. Meaning, you don’t have to use your slower connection.
I have dialup and I think it’s impossible nowadays to stay updated unless you have access to a high-speed connection, either a friend or relative or a public computer. I’ve found virtually all of Microsoft’s updates are available as executables. You download them on a high-speed computer then install them to yours. Avast’s definition database is also available as one large executable. From my experience, after you install the latest version you’ll still have to update again from the interface but this time it’ll take just a few minutes as opposed to all day. I’d give that a try that. It would be best if you can stay current.
