Was avast! 4 Home Edition more performant than avast! 5 Free Antivirus?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I have ben using avast for quite some time now and never gotten a virus infection again ever since, but since I was asked to renew avast because my license was comming to an end and installed avast! 5 Free Antivirus, it seems to be much less performant in the prevention department than avast! 4 Home Edition.

I just got infected with Exploit JS.Pdfka.NH, I was surprised because with avast! 4 Home Edition this thing would have either had been automatically blocked or I would have been asked to disconnect from the website who sent this infection. But since I installed avast! 5 Free Antivitus, this has never happened.

Is that normal?

2

no it’s not ;D

check this (french link) http://infomars.fr/WordPress/peghorse/?cat=137

3

Okay thanks, but what am I supposed to learn from this link? All I learnt was that based on this guy’s test, that 4.8 sucks and that 5 isn’t perfect but made progress over 4.8.

4

The protection level only increased from 4.8 to 5.
There were performance advantages on 5 over the 4.8.
How do you know that you were infected with Exploit JS.Pdfka.NH if avast did not detect it?

5

I noticed that my internet browsing became strange, I could barely access any website and when I could it was super slow and weird.

So I deleted my history and temporary internet files from both Firefox and Internet Explorer, then I ran a minutious scan with avast! 5 Free Antivirus and that is when he found this Exploit, I then put it in quarantine and it seems that my computer is mostly back to normal (I hope).

6

As a matter of interest where all the settings at default

7

So it got in without being detected but was picked up later by an on demand scan. Sounds to me like it got in before there was a signature for it but a subsequent defs update added the detection. These things can happen with any AV.

8

I just recently installed avast! 5 Free Antivirus, I did not mess with the settings.

Well it looks like my computer is back to normal and from what I gathered avast! 5 is better than vast! 4, so I guess I will stick with avast 5.

Thanks folks.

9

or it might be a potential bug in the realtime protection? not sure but the possibility is there.

10

Is it normal that we don’t get the female voice who says “You have a virus on your computer” with the ambulance alarm siren on avast! 5?

11

Voice scheme changed from 4.8 to 5.
You can configure them into avast settings.
It’s easier for on/off, and harder (advanced users) to change the wav files that generate the sounds.

12

I agree with you Verkor.

13

Don’t. Believe. Peghorse. He’s just an idiot thinking a Youtube video where he tests a handful of viruses means something (and then he has conclusions like “this AV has no false positives at all” “this AV detects all viruses”…yeah right.) He also thought it’d be smart to test one of the first avast! 5 betas and judge Alwil Software’s performance with that… Besides, nearly all “antiviruses” in his tests are completely unknown to 99% of the world.
Seriously, even AV-Comparatives where nothing but brute detection (without actually executing or downloading malware) is tested are more representative of the actual detections.

14

If you’re not sure, you can recheck your machine with free Mbam…!
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
asyn

15

thats not entirely true… AV-C doesnt only do on-demand tests…