Your system is not fully protected

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Hello

I am using Avast Free 5.1.889 and I have checked the option

Settings > Updates > Engine and Virus Definitions > Ask when an update is available

and get a warning on my little taskbar avast symbol (exclamation mark on yellow ground) telling me “Attention: Your system is not fully protected” although I have the latest virus definitions.
Wouldn’t it be right to get that exclamation mark only when I have once declined to download the latest virus definitions? Because as long as I have my program and the definitions up to date I think it is clear that my system is fully protected, and so there
is obviously no need for that warning and indeed it is not true: My system is fully protected as long as I do not decline to get the latest definitions.

Am I wrong or is it just too difficult to implement that right or …?

2

Hi Suiker,

Welcome to the avast forum,

If you don’t want to let avast doing the update automatically but based on the user notification, you had did the right one.

But that warning is not related with avast definitions i guess, but it more related with one or some of avast shileds not running well. You may check into the avast summary on avast interface to make sure is there any shields didn’t running well in your system.

cheers,

3

Hello and thanks for the nice welcome.

All shields run well. And when I check

Settings > Updates > Engine and Virus Definitions > Automatic update

the exclamation mark is gone, no warning furthermore. Going back to “Ask when an update is available” the exclamation mark is back (although I have updated a few minutes ago).

4

I confirm the behaviour.

To workaround this, open the GUI, go to settings,status bar, and un-check the bottom one (definitions auto updates).

5

Well thank you, that does the trick.

But what I do not understand is: some hours later avast told me “your virus definitions are not currently up to date… please update” and I did not update. I thought the exclamation mark would now be shown, but it wasn’t and is still (some hours later) not, although avast wanted to update again. Why?

(“settings > status bar > virus definitions version” is checked,
“Maintenance > updates” shows: “your definitions are out of date”)

6

It’s not a problem, just would like to know: shouldn’t I get that warning, when I have once refused to update or am I missing something?

7

Tell the truth, I’ve no idea.
You would think you would get an alert when the defs are out of date, even though you’ve set it to manual updates. Maybe the message is considered adequate. I’d consider it adequate.

8

(I thought that’s what the option “settings > status bar > virus definitions version” is for.)

Edit:
And yes I think it would be good to get an alert, because the “pop-up window” telling me my definitions are out of date is only shown for a few (20?) seconds. So if I am not in front of my computer when avast is looking for new definitions, I miss it (if there are new ones).

9

Thanks Tarq57! This was always something that bugged me about Avast. I wanted to manually update it, but I didn’t want it to then tell me I was unsecure just for manually updating. This fixed it right up.

10

@gcrogers, please just take into account that

Avast main GUI → Settings → Status Bar → “Virus definitions version”

is NOT working correctly (there is a BUG).

That means, as other users in this same topic are confirming (and in other topics too) , if you happen to miss one database update, the tray icon of Avast won’t display any “exclamation mark”, so “your system is SECURED” will still be the tray status.

The main GUI will indeed show that your database is not the latest, but not the tray icon (as it should, according to that BUGGED setting).