AVIRA 8 Release Notes - Now released!

[argus tuft]

I've had no problems whatsoever with the webguard, in fact I don't notice it's there at all. Although I do see the same thing as mfenech at speedtest.net, ie reported d/l speeds way too high (this doesn't bother me though ;))

[osip]

Well, the webguard as earlier stated works perfect here, see topic http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=206383
post 21
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?p=1224576#post1224576 post 26

Also, after the genius Tzuk made an update to Sandboxie see here:
http://sandboxie.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=20702#20702

all problems regarding sbxie driver load are solved !

added:
regarding speedtests and download managers it´s best to temp deactivate webguard, no big deal...

[Blackcat]

-{ Quote: "Haven't you read the Avira forum? That doesn't work for many." }-
Many conflicting posts.

It appears that if the WebGuard is installed, selecting Update and changing the option to " Do not download product updates" AND uninstalling the WebGuard seems to solve the majority of the problems. Although a simple uninstall worked here.

Unfortunately I had to remove the WebGuard as it slowed my machine down too much on dial-up.

[FRug]

Mele: The files of webguard are ALWAYS in your directory, whether you do a fresh install or not. It doesn't matter whether the files are there, what matters is whether they are 'activated' during installation or not. If they weren't always there it would be impossible to enable/disable features after installation.

What i wonder is whether you have process guard running during your setup changes (install / uninstall of features). That can seriously mess things up for such software.

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "Nicholae stated a few hours ago that if you click on that you won't get Webguard installed if you have the Premium version. He says you will get Backup installed instead because Avira made a mistake. He insists that Webguard is available ONLY for the Suite. He is wrong of course, but to have one of the two Avira techs make that bad of a mistake (and I called him on it and he still says Webguard is available only for the Suite) well..... :( The person who started the thread called him on it too.

Pay no attention to what Avira says about Webguard. They don't understand their own damn creation or how much damage it can do to a computer. I just tried to use System Restore to a point before the internal upgrade that messed up my browsers so badly because of Webguard. I have 90 restore points and ALL OF THEM before the April 14 internal upgrade to Avira 8 are invalid! I had this happen only one other time in all the years I've had XP and that was when Kaspersky got in a restore point and deleted eicar. (I had just gotten a beta version that tech support had directed me to get and I hadn't yet excluded System Volume Information from the KAV scanners). System Restore has been very stable for me partly because I don't let an AV scan System Volume Information. I think that before I had a chance to exclude it again after the internal Avira 8 upgrade (my settings were gone after that internal upgrade) that Guard got in there and screwed up a restore point thus invalidating all restore points before it. Nothing has ever screwed System Restore for me except an Antivirus program.

Anyhow, if you want to stop Webguard from wanting to install you need to uninstall Avira and use the Avira registry tool to clean and then fetch a clean copy of ver 8 and install it, choose custom install and decline Webguard. See, if you have ver 8 from the internal upgrade, you already have all the webguard files in the Avira folder. That is how arrogant Avira has been. They shoved the garbage down your throat assuming every single person would be thrilled to have Webguard. And they are so arrogant that they will not admit their mistake now and their techs are posting wrong information about Premium saying Webguard does not come on Premium ...UGH! You need a copy of Avira that does not contain those damn files if you are not going to use Webguard. Avira made a major mistake in forcing that upgrade from within and sticking all those files on people's computers. If Avira had to have internal upgrade then they should have made Webguard an entirely separate download and installation so that only those who wanted it and knew they would not have problems with it would have gotten the files. Instead Avira forced the files on everyone...even though I told in the beta how bad it was for me. It never occured to me that they would force the Webguard files on me if I did the internal upgrade. Webguard was running even though I did not install it. This is actually worse than what Kaspersky did with chkdsk." }-

Mele,

What AV are you going to use now that Avira 8 is so problematic for you?

[rookieman]

The last time I installed it I keep getting a print spooler error :thumbd: I've tried to install different antiviruses over the years and this was the first one that I couldn't get working.They even told me to turn off winpatrol.This computer i'm using here is only 2 months old!There's either a bad bug in my new Dell or with Avira.The strange thing is not everyone had problems with this.I couldn't even get the free version working either.I guess i'm one of the ones that's wasn't so fortunate this time.I've installed Avast Pro with no probs at all.I hope this problem gets solved soon.I might try this again on my son's XP later to see what happens.

[trjam]

the print spooler error deals with DEP in Vista. After investigation I changed my settings. I have seen this happen before with different softwares.

[Big Apple]

-{ Quote: "no offense mele but why dont you just shoot your computer and get it over with. I mean I just read about 30 threads comepletly over their and you, yes you, are the only one that is acting like the new version has brought us to the brink of total world destruction. To even compare it to chk/dsk is totally assine on your part and just made me realize how little you actually know. Issues? Some, but I challenge you to show me the multitudes you speak of that are basically having to gut their PC because of this release.

Again no offense, your offer some solid feedback when it comes to problem solving and then other times you sound like a raving lunatic. Which is it? Peace bro." }-

I go for the 'raving lunatic' and I think he/she should ban any AV completely or try a clean install of Windows and I bet that the sun will shine again.

[djohn]

From V7 to V8 and still working perfect for me on vista:thumb:

[duke1959]

-{ Quote: "From V7 to V8 and still working perfect for me on vista:thumb:" }-

Version 8 working great here as well on Windows XP with WebGuard installed. I also have Mamutu running and Windows Firewall enabled with no PC or browser slowdowns. I hope some people can get their Avira problems worked out. It seems for most to be a very good program.

[djohn]

Mele,No Offense but If I remember seing some where in past threads, are you not still using XP service pack 1? If So do you think that can be a factor of some of your software issues.

[C.S.J]

for someone who obviously has issues and concerns regarding security to not install latest service packs, seems rather foolish.

I think the majority of people are now regarding such comments as bashing and worthless, due to constant negative comments, I don't believe ive ever seen something good to be said.

If its not complaining about Avira, it is Kaspersky, if not them, someone else... Including Drweb.

Harsh words, but if you have constant complaints, maybe you should sell your computer and be rid of all problems and concerns.

If you certainly don't like an antivirus, I don't even understand the purchase.

[djohn]

-{ Quote: "for someone who obviously has issues and concerns regarding security to not install latest service packs, seems rather foolish.

I think the majority of people are now regarding such comments as bashing and worthless, due to constant negative comments, I don't believe ive ever seen something good to be said.

If its not complaining about Avira, it is Kaspersky, if not them, someone else... Including Drweb.

Harsh words, but if you have constant complaints, maybe you should sell your computer and be rid of all problems and concerns.

If you certainly don't like an antivirus, I don't even understand the purchase.[/QUOTe Yep,My thoughts Exactly, just did not want to be the one to say it.

[Solaris]

-{ Quote: "... if you have constant complaints, maybe you should sell your computer and be rid of all problems and concerns. ..." }-
:thumb: ;D. Yeeees !

[djohn]

what the heck happen on my reply :-\

[trjam]

ok, what needed to be said is said. Lets get this one back on Avira. please.;)

[djohn]

what do you folks think the heuristics should be set at Default medium any suggestions.

[trjam]

I set all of mine at high with no issues. I think Buck does to.

[djohn]

great thanks,I will to then:thumb:

[mfenech]

Thanks, mele and blackcat. I'll reboot and see if that sticks.

[DVD+R]

Not a single problem with Avira Premium Security Suite here :dry: and there wouldnt be a problem for any of you buggers If you left it alone and didnt fiddle with what you dont know about :shifty: :shifty: :P

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "I set all of mine at high with no issues. I think Buck does to." }-

Yup- high on every friggin' setting and have been that way for three years with no problems. Got my first FP yesterday, and no big deal. Had many with Dr. Web and F-Protect. FPs in Avira much overstated.

[Boost]

-{ Quote: "I set all of mine at high with no issues. I think Buck does to." }-

High is all I use :thumb:

[The_Duality]

5th time now that the Guard Service has failed... :dry:

Nothing in event logs, or in Avira report files. I can't seem to be able to find a common denominator for these failures...

[Wake2]

I had used Avira free version few years back, and uninstalled it due to problems with the updater, but downloaded the new
version 8 and wow I am impressed, so far no problems at all,
but now for the dilemma should I buy the Av or the Suite.

Wake

[trjam]

Tzuk has stated the issue with Sandboxie and Aviras web guard is fixed. I have tested and it works.

[jad_123]

New here at Wilders but read here all the time.

Just wanted to post that my experience with Avira has been top notch.
Upgraded to V8 on 3 PC's without and problems. Two were XP and one with Vista. Have everything set to high including webguard and none of my machines have taken a performance hit. Great job Avira

[The_Duality]

Well, I just removed WebGuard, and I have no more crashes. Looks like it was an incompatibility issue with my Call Of Duty 4 RCON Client. :)

[Nike_P]

same for me, i just removed the WebGuard, the reason is: everything on Internet went so slowly, so i felt i was forced to remove it.
:( sad.
A question to those who use WebGuard is it the same for you guys? that WebGuard slow the Internet while you surf or not?

[Mongol]

-{ Quote: "same for me, i just removed the WebGuard, the reason is: everything on Internet went so slowly, so i felt i was forced to remove it.
:( sad.
A question to those who use WebGuard is it the same for you guys? that WebGuard slow the Internet while you surf or not?" }-

Maybe a slight bit of delay but virtually not noticeable here on my trial...:o :)

[Wake2]

Am using Avira Premium with the webguard enabled with DefenseWall on Vista Home Premium Service Pack 1 and
have not noticed any major slow down using Firefox, or
Opera, or IE, am still using the Avira trial and than I think
I will do the trial for the suite to help me make up my mind.

Wake

[LoneWolf]

Well tried again last night and same results as with my post #402 (long thread here)
Oh well...Avast home for me, working like a charm too. ;D

[KoRnGtL15]

I apologize if this has been asked a million times before. I just never had this problem with the previous version. Email scanning is a hit and miss now. Mostly a miss though. Why is it not scanning every email like before? I am using Mozilla ThunderBird and Outlook Express.

[djohn]

Thus far I only received a few emails since the upgrade to AV8 but the I ones I received all been scanned.So far I think avira Is pretty solid performer.

[deanmartin]

-{ Quote: "same for me, i just removed the WebGuard, the reason is: everything on Internet went so slowly, so i felt i was forced to remove it.
:( sad.
A question to those who use WebGuard is it the same for you guys? that WebGuard slow the Internet while you surf or not?" }-
Running fine here, but with a new Vista. But i didn't have any slow down's the 2 days it was on my 2year old XP either.

[duke1959]

Avira Premium still running great here. I wanted to report that it blocked the URL Media.adrevolver.com and said it stopped a Trojan called HTML/Infected.WebPage.Gen. I looked it up through Avira's virus info. and it basically reported that it was found in the Wild last year and again this year. Cool.

[fedore]

Who ever has problems with 'Avira webguard' can uninstall it by going to control panel > add and remove program then highlight Avira Premium and select change > modify then just uncheck the Antivir Webguard box and click next until completed. Restart cpu and keep using Avira without webguard.

[innerpeace]

-{ Quote: "Tzuk has stated the issue with Sandboxie and Aviras web guard is fixed. I have tested and it works." }-
WebGuard seems to be working fine with Sbie beta version 3.25.12.0 on my machine also.

[Nike_P]

well thats really weird, because i never had any slow down with Avira, but since i installed this WebGuard when i surf on the Internet then (example): wilderssecurity does not open all the pages and its so slow, this with WebGuard, hm i wounder why?
I use XP-SP2

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "well thats really weird, because i never had any slow down with Avira, but since i installed this WebGuard when i surf on the Internet then (example): wilderssecurity does not open all the pages and its so slow, this with WebGuard, hm i wounder why?
I use XP-SP2" }-

Not uncommon-some people are having this problem with webguard- go to Avira forum for more information. Best thing to do is uninstall it. I uninstalled it from my security suite as I was having problems with some slowdown and some images loading slowing or not at all. You don't need webguard anyway- you are fully protected without it.

[FRug]

Nike_P: would be interesting to know what other apps you have running that might influence your browsing in some way (maybe some proxy application or anything alike)... Personally, I don't experience any noticeable slowdown with wilders or any other site whatsoever. I'm runnning the suite including all features + ThreatFire usually surfing with firefox, but IE 7 and good old mozilla are behaving well too.

This is a 2,4 GHz Core2Duo with 2GB RAM and a 6000Kbit DSL line, pretty decent machine but nothing over the top.

Loading times for wilders main page is (according to fasterfox) about 200-300ms slower, (2,5.. vs 2,2.. seconds loading time). That's well within what I'd expect from a webscanner.

[Nike_P]

well i have only avira installed on my PC, nothing else that running...
Thats weird some people have issue and some not, thats why i asked...

[Threedog]

Avira has been running good here. There is a little slow down with the webguard but nothing serious so I have been keeping it running. I am running Defensewall also so that might be contributing to it also. Other than that I have been really pleased with it so far.

[Thug21]

Running Avira Premium on this PC alongside OA free and Returnil.

No problems at all and the web guard is pretty fast!

I actually let the program upgrade itself from V7 to V8 on 4 PC's without any issues so good job Avira!

[De Hollander]

At this time I have stopped using avira premium.

Perhaps they are cosmetic bugs that I have ran in to, but at this stage I am not feeling to happy with v8. On top of it I am getting a error with the mailguard. Disabling "scan incoming and outgoing emails" solved that problem. In time, after a couple of updates, I will try it again :thumb:

[bugsy_pal]

Version 8 installed silently on my PC and has been working very smoothly. WebGuard was not installed at all, so I ran the installer, and installed WebGuard - no need to uninstall/reinstall.

I have not noticed significant slowdowns when browsing - in all, I would say that WebGuard is very unobtrusive when doing general browsing.

One thing I did notice, that I'm not sure will be a concern - when downloading a couple of big files in Opera from Rapdshare, my download speed was about one quarter of what I would normally expect. I wondered whether WebGuard was causing this. I noticed that the Webguard popup window came up and showed the download scanning progress - but while Opera showed only about 50% downloaded at 20kb/sec by the time that the WebGuard popup showed 100%, after WebGuard had done it's thing, the Opera download jumped from 50% to 100% in an instant, and the average speed for the download was then about 90kb/sec.

So I assume that Webguard somehow caches the downloaded file while it is checking it, and causing the apparent download speed to be lower - but then when the file is checked, the overall download speed is much the same. I need to do some more measurements. Is this other peoples' experience?

[mfenech]

-{ Quote: "So I assume that Webguard somehow caches the downloaded file while it is checking it, and causing the apparent download speed to be lower - but then when the file is checked, the overall download speed is much the same. I need to do some more measurements. Is this other peoples' experience?" }-
I experienced the same when downloading files. I have WG shut off now.

[FRug]

bugsy_pal: yes, this is normal. if it didn't do that for large files like archives, your browser would think it has lost connection because no more data is coming in. So the usual approach is to stream the received data at a lower rate to the browser until scanning is completed. So technically speaking, you are downloading at the same speed from the webserver as without webguard.

[waters]

Same speed as normal with bittorrent.The only issue at all i have noticed is that if i leave the pc for a long time and go back and try to start internet,it takes ages to start.Once it has then it runs normal

[osip]

-{ Quote: "So I assume that Webguard somehow caches the downloaded file while it is checking it" }-
Yes, and it can be frustrating to wait...BD IS has similar approach. Best to temp disable WG, when the file is downloaded it´s anyhow checked by the guard when detected...

[JasSolo]

-{ Quote: "...So I assume that Webguard somehow caches the downloaded file while it is checking it, and causing the apparent download speed to be lower.." }-

TrustPort does the same, except for a slowdown in download speed.


Cheers

[Killtek]

I'm running Avira Premium Security Suite with Webguard and ArtificialDynamics Safespace and I'm not having any slowness when browsing. All under Vista Ultimate 32bit SP1.

Just because it's running slow with your config/software combination doesn't mean that it's the defacto for everyone else... and vise versa :)

Avira isn't the problem.. it's the rest of the stuff you may have running that is conflicting with Avira.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "
Just because it's running slow with your config/software combination doesn't mean that it's the defacto for everyone else... and vise versa :)

Avira isn't the problem.. it's the rest of the stuff you may have running that is conflicting with Avira." }-


No, it is Avira. Avira has stated publicly and earlier in beta forum that, of course, Webguard slows your browsing and, of course, it ruins your speed tests. If you are a terrified user who is convinced by the marketing hype that you will have a disaster if you don't use Webguard, then you will use it and suffer the slowness and the fact you can't run your speed testing software in the background or ever do an accurate speed test. If you are not gullible to marketing hype you won't use Webguard. It is that simple.

[dw426]

-{ Quote: "No, it is Avira. Avira has stated publicly and earlier in beta forum that, of course, Webguard slows your browsing and, of course, it ruins your speed tests. If you are a terrified user who is convinced by the marketing hype that you will have a disaster if you don't use Webguard, then you will use it and suffer the slowness and the fact you can't run your speed testing software in the background or ever do an accurate speed test. If you are not gullible to marketing hype you won't use Webguard. It is that simple." }-

Well, regardless of whether Avira has said anything or not, my browsing has NOT been slowed (I ran a test between Avira's Webguard and the HTTP scanning function of Avast, neither of which has had an impact). I wouldn't be so quick to throw us all that are in favor of this type of functionality into the "gullible paranoids" group. The fact is, I have been to quite a few websites lately where BOTH AVAST and Avira guards have stopped the page from loading and warned me about a trojan and such being on that page.

If it says it will stop a certain thing from happening and actually DOES stop it, it's not so much hype, now is it? I'm afraid from what I'm seeing around here lately is that in the attempt to comfort the masses that are afraid there's a hacker/trojan/CIA agent at every turn on the Internet, actual dangers are being tossed aside as paranoia. Remember, just because you're sitting behind 30 different security apps and have a pop-up every time your computer farts, does NOT mean you are invincible.

Malware/virus writers are even MORE determined to get at you than the security vendors are determined to protect you. If you forget that one very important fact, you're only setting yourself up for trouble. It's always best to try to gather as much information as you can and take every reasonable precaution you can to protect yourself. But as far as paranoia, well, it's only paranoia if they really aren't out to get you.

[Mele20]

They are out to get those who insist on going to sites like Facebook and CNN and use Flash Player and IE. Stay away from those sites, don't install Flash Player and use Fx or Opera and you greatly increase your odds of never being infected even if you use NO security software. Safe hex will still save you in almost all instances. It is just that many users refuse to practice safe hex and they are the ones who insist on saying "they are out to get you". I don't buy that. They are out to get those who refuse to protect themselves by acting with prudence at all times when on the internet or using email.

[dw426]

-{ Quote: "They are out to get those who insist on going to sites like Facebook and CNN and use Flash Player and IE. Stay away from those sites, don't install Flash Player and use Fx or Opera and you greatly increase your odds of never being infected even if you use NO security software. Safe hex will still save you in almost all instances. It is just that many users refuse to practice safe hex and they are the ones who insist on saying "they are out to get you". I don't buy that. They are out to get those who refuse to protect themselves by acting with prudence at all times when on the internet or using email." }-

I completely agree with you that just about every infection is due to little to no protection and the insistence of people wanting to crack this and that program or download so and so's newest album/movie. The only thing I was saying out of all that rambling on I did was that recently we've started seeing the ability of malware to break right on through some of these tried and true security apps and that they were no longer just being found on the "seedy side" of the internet.

Personally I find people who say "they are out to get you" and don't practice "safe hex" are hypocrites. But make no mistake about it, they really ARE out to get you if they can. I say that sitting behind Firefox with Noscript, Adblock Plus, Sandboxie, Avira Premium, Spywareblaster and so on. It's just going to get worse in the future. Criminals are always going to go where they can get the most bang for their buck, so to speak.

Why rob a bank and risk the Federal Pen or getting shot when you can unleash a keylogger or set up a fake bank site and own that bank for days, maybe even weeks with a drastically reduced risk? ;)

[djohn]

The bottom line here,one can never be to safe.I say to defeat the bad guys one must think like one, this applys to are general daily lives as well.why shredd up are personal info before putting to the trash and yet put these things online such as banking,social security etc, with out proper security.why one would have a burglar alarm in there Home and not use it.Awarness/precautions and common sense so to speak=secure it most of the time.

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "No, it is Avira. Avira has stated publicly and earlier in beta forum that, of course, Webguard slows your browsing and, of course, it ruins your speed tests. If you are a terrified user who is convinced by the marketing hype that you will have a disaster if you don't use Webguard, then you will use it and suffer the slowness and the fact you can't run your speed testing software in the background or ever do an accurate speed test. If you are not gullible to marketing hype you won't use Webguard. It is that simple." }-
I have been using it here for several days now and it doesn't slow down my browsing at all. For me, the only 2 that don't are Avast's and Avira's web scanner. The rest suck in varying degrees. I refuse to use a web scanner if it does slow me down, so believe me when I say, Avira's does not. If it did, I'd disable it..

And if you need to test your speed once, disable the web guard and test, then enable it again I guess...

Also zero issues with Avira in general. One good product as far as I can see.

[19monty64]

-{ Quote: "They are out to get those who insist on going to sites like Facebook and CNN and use Flash Player and IE. Stay away from those sites, don't install Flash Player and use Fx or Opera and you greatly increase your odds of never being infected even if you use NO security software. Safe hex will still save you in almost all instances. It is just that many users refuse to practice safe hex and they are the ones who insist on saying "they are out to get you". I don't buy that. They are out to get those who refuse to protect themselves by acting with prudence at all times when on the internet or using email." }-
I have to add my 2c here. I set up a pc for my 2 teen-aged daughters. Their only use for the pc (besides school projects) is Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail. The only browser they use is IE7. FlashPlayer is installed too. Their only security is AntiVirFree, ThreatFire and a router. Twice a month I go in their pc to do maintenance and check on updates. I also perform on-line scans. Months have gone by with not a single infection, BSOD or crash. NADA! My daughters don't know the meaning of "safe hex", so PLEASE, quit with the FUD already!!! Rant done....

[duke1959]

Avira Personal and ThreatFire free will be my choices as well for security when my license for Mamutu and Avira Premium expire. Well maybe Avast and TF. Or AVG 8.0 Free and TF. Or maybe....LOL.

[FRug]

With regard to the usefulness of a web scanner I highly suggest reading the sophos threat report which was published recently. Not visiting facebook or myspace doesn't really make a difference, nor does visiting crack or warez sites.


http://www.sophos.com/securityrep08q1.html

Sometimes I just can't believe how much the discussions in here resemble the preachings of religious lunatics in the middle ages. It's scaring me, really. I just wish for discussions to be less emotional and biased by having experienced issues with one or another software. There are different approaches to staying secured, sandboxes, webscanners, execution control etc etc etc. What works for one, does not have to work for everyone. Remember that security also lies in not everyone doing the same! Diversity in methods of protection is one additional hurdle for the bad guys. So, if you feel you're better off with a sandbox than a webscanner, feel free to do so. But please, please... do not call the users of a webscanner idiots just because you do not share their view or find it unsuitable to your needs.
The same goes the other way around. I find sandboxes a great thing, but have not made all that good experiences with their stability on MY system. Also handling of downloads was somewhat awkward for me... could be that has changed since then though.

Let's just try to be reasonable people, ok? I find those level-headed discussions much more satisfying than endless ranting pro this or contra that with random insults thrown in to spice the soup.

[djohn]

-{ Quote: "With regard to the usefulness of a web scanner I highly suggest reading the sophos threat report which was published recently. Not visiting facebook or myspace doesn't really make a difference, nor does visiting crack or warez sites.


http://www.sophos.com/securityrep08q1.html

Sometimes I just can't believe how much the discussions in here resemble the preachings of religious lunatics in the middle ages. It's scaring me, really. I just wish for discussions to be less emotional and biased by having experienced issues with one or another software. There are different approaches to staying secured, sandboxes, webscanners, execution control etc etc etc. What works for one, does not have to work for everyone. Remember that security also lies in not everyone doing the same! Diversity in methods of protection is one additional hurdle for the bad guys. So, if you feel you're better off with a sandbox than a webscanner, feel free to do so. But please, please... do not call the users of a webscanner idiots just because you do not share their view or find it unsuitable to your needs.
The same goes the other way around. I find sandboxes a great thing, but have not made all that good experiences with their stability on MY system. Also handling of downloads was somewhat awkward for me... could be that has changed since then though.

Let's just try to be reasonable people, ok? I find those level-headed discussions much more satisfying than endless ranting pro this or contra that with random insults thrown in to spice the soup." }-
well Said

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "With regard to the usefulness of a web scanner I highly suggest reading the sophos threat report which was published recently. Not visiting facebook or myspace doesn't really make a difference, nor does visiting crack or warez sites.


http://www.sophos.com/securityrep08q1.html

" }-

That was interesting report. Thank you.

I don't see however that report's connection to your saying it doesn't make a difference if one visits crack, warez or Facebook, MyRealspace in terms of the risk in getting infected! Facebook and MyRealspace are cesspools of malware and junk sites on top of it. You visit them to INVITE infection if you are a malware researcher. Plus, obviously crack and warez sites just like Porn and gambling sites are malware nests so I don't get why you think it doesn't make a difference as far as getting infected goes if you do or don't visit those sites. Of course, it makes a difference!

[FRug]

Mele, what i mean is that the classical view of "not visiting certain sites" does not help. All of the sites i've personally seen this year that were infected were either private websites, specialized online forums (for example gaming related), government websites, financial institutions or well known news sites.

I don't go to myspace, never been on facebook and i do not visit warez or pr0n sites. So in the classical sense I'm a rather safe surfer. Still, i've personally stumbled over dozens of infected websites this year.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "
I don't go to myspace, never been on facebook and i do not visit warez or pr0n sites. So in the classical sense I'm a rather safe surfer. Still, i've personally stumbled over dozens of infected websites this year." }-

Ok, I see what you are saying. I would simply say that you still should not visit warez, porn, etc. sites and also be very careful about major sites. Visit them on Fx or Opera and install the Proxomitron. It doesn't (at least for me) slow your browsing nor does it interfere with speed tests and it filters out all ads including poisoned ones and does a ton of other things. Install a classic HIPS so you'll know if some nasty did download and was trying to exe. or use a sandbox or whatever, but I still don't think anyone should be using a webguard as your Sandbox, HIPS, will catch it plus if you don't use IE the chances of getting a nasty on a webpage at some big popular site is negligible if Opera or Fx is up to date. I might be vulnerable as far as Fx goes because I am using 1.5 on my host machine (will upgrade to Fx3 when it is released), but I have Proxo and ProcessGuard and I simply see no need for webguard as Guard will catch it but just later than webguard.

[trjam]

-{ Quote: "Ok, I see what you are saying. I would simply say that you still should not visit warez, porn, etc. sites and also be very careful about major sites. Visit them on Fx or Opera and install the Proxomitron. It doesn't (at least for me) slow your browsing nor does it interfere with speed tests and it filters out all ads including poisoned ones and does a ton of other things. Install a classic HIPS so you'll know if some nasty did download and was trying to exe. or use a sandbox or whatever, but I still don't think anyone should be using a webguard as your Sandbox, HIPS, will catch it plus if you don't use IE the chances of getting a nasty on a webpage at some big popular site is negligible if Opera or Fx is up to date. I might be vulnerable as far as Fx goes because I am using 1.5 on my host machine (will upgrade to Fx3 when it is released), but I have Proxo and ProcessGuard and I simply see no need for webguard as Guard will catch it but just later than webguard." }-
None of this makes sense. You are telling someone not to use a webguard, but to use other multiple apps, ie.sandbox,hips, to accomplish the same principal as just using the frigging web guard. Mele, do you not think that those other apps may also use processes that can effect performance. It is like you have a crusade against web scanners and thats cool as you are entitled to use and think anyway you want. But when you insist that a person doesnt need a pail, but to use a bucket instead, excuse me while I keep banging my head against the wall.:dry:

[dw426]

-{ Quote: "None of this makes sense. You are telling someone not to use a webguard, but to use other multiple apps, ie.sandbox,hips, to accomplish the same principal as just using the frigging web guard. Mele, do you not think that those other apps may also use processes that can effect performance. It is like you have a crusade against web scanners and thats cool as you are entitled to use and think anyway you want. But when you insist that a person doesnt need a pail, but to use a bucket instead, excuse me while I keep banging my head against the wall.:dry:" }-

EXACTLY. If I thought a web scanner would catch 100% of every malicious thing out there, I would NOT layer myself in the other programs, and vice versa. The truth is no program can catch everything, which is why you layer in the first place. Look, IMHO, the topic has been beaten to death, people have weighed in with their opinions.

If a scanner doesn't affect your performance and you like that little bit of extra protection, use it, if it affects your performance to an unacceptable extent and/or you don't feel the need to use it, then don't, but enough of the throwing around reports from this that and the other and the "it hasn't happened to me, you're just being silly" and "my daughter/son/wife/grandma/ family pet goes here, does this and that, and they've been clean for years so you're wrong" attitudes. Use it if you choose and it helps, don't if you don't want to and don't see the need.

Sometimes I look in here in these forums and wonder if the years of experience some have and some claim to have are getting to their heads and people are starting to have a go at their fellow members. We're here to learn, not insult each other or throw our knowledge in other's faces. Some know more than others, yes, but let's help them (myself included) learn without calling them paranoid idiots. Malware changes every day, there may come a time when all of these program we love and defend won't do squat against them. We're already seeing things like that happen if you look at some recent posts.

[Edwin024]

I now use Avira SS with webguard, Boclean, SAS Pro and Norton Antibot ( and Windows defender is running in the background too in Vista Ultimate). I hope that is enough to be as safe as possible, next to a conscious mind. Agreed?

[Boost]

-{ Quote: "EXACTLY. If I thought a web scanner would catch 100% of every malicious thing out there, I would NOT layer myself in the other programs, and vice versa. The truth is no program can catch everything, which is why you layer in the first place. Look, IMHO, the topic has been beaten to death, people have weighed in with their opinions.

If a scanner doesn't affect your performance and you like that little bit of extra protection, use it, if it affects your performance to an unacceptable extent and/or you don't feel the need to use it, then don't, but enough of the throwing around reports from this that and the other and the "it hasn't happened to me, you're just being silly" and "my daughter/son/wife/grandma/ family pet goes here, does this and that, and they've been clean for years so you're wrong" attitudes. Use it if you choose and it helps, don't if you don't want to and don't see the need.

Sometimes I look in here in these forums and wonder if the years of experience some have and some claim to have are getting to their heads and people are starting to have a go at their fellow members. We're here to learn, not insult each other or throw our knowledge in other's faces. Some know more than others, yes, but let's help them (myself included) learn without calling them paranoid idiots. Malware changes every day, there may come a time when all of these program we love and defend won't do squat against them. We're already seeing things like that happen if you look at some recent posts." }-


A computer is a tool,and the way some people download so many programs just to keep their computer "safe" maybe it's best if you just put the tool away if you cant use it for what it was intended to do :thumb:

[Edwin024]

You can also turn that around... for a few people not for everyone. There are millions of users of Avira, don't forget that.

[djohn]

-{ Quote: "You can also turn that around... for a few people not for everyone. There are millions of users of Avira, don't forget that." }-
I would say with over 34.000 views and nearly 600 hundred post, yep lots of users.

[trjam]

Put forthe the effort to read all the posts and you will see the number is miuch lower.

[Macstorm]

-{ Quote: "So, if you feel you're better off with a sandbox than a webscanner, feel free to do so. But please, please... do not call the users of a webscanner idiots just because you do not share their view or find it unsuitable to your needs." }-
Agreed :thumb:
and also i hope this stop those "i use sandbox"-"i don't use any AV scanner"-"reboot to restore"(LOL) type of posts for good >:(
BTW, thanks for the Sophos link :thumb:

[Diver]

This thread has really degenerated.

Mele20, you are way overboard. If you don't like Avira, use something else.

Religious lunatics, no just lunatics ranting.

I read the Sophos report and it does not say a thing about how or why a web scanner would be helpful.

I believe the rational of the web scanner is to catch malformed items that are intended to corrupt the browser and allow arbitrary code execution while these items are being parsed by the browser, prior to being written to disk where the on access scanner would take over. Whether this can be demonstrated to provide an actual improvement in security is another matter.

The web scanner is active on my machine right now, but I am unable to notice any difference in the speed of browsing. It may present issues on some older slower machines.

Perhaps someone around here has an objective or helpful thing to say about web scanners, but a few of you are giving me a headache.

[lucas1985]

-{ Quote: "Perhaps someone around here has an objective or helpful thing to say about web scanners." }-
If the webscanner is annoying to you (breaks your firewall rules, slows down your browsing, etc), it can be replaced with other security measures. If it works OK, keep it.

[trjam]

AVIRA ROCKS

[ccsito]

-{ Quote: "I have to add my 2c here. I set up a pc for my 2 teen-aged daughters. Their only use for the pc (besides school projects) is Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Hotmail. The only browser they use is IE7. FlashPlayer is installed too. Their only security is AntiVirFree, ThreatFire and a router. Twice a month I go in their pc to do maintenance and check on updates. I also perform on-line scans. Months have gone by with not a single infection, BSOD or crash. NADA! My daughters don't know the meaning of "safe hex", so PLEASE, quit with the FUD already!!! Rant done...." }-

Same here. And I don't use Threatfire and a router. :thumb: :thumb:

[Ed_H]

So far I have used Avira 8 Premium with Vista Firewall Control (free) and now I am running a trial of of the Suite. I have used the WebGuard with both setups and notice no slowdowns. The firewall in the Suite seems to cause a SLIGHT slowdown over the Vista firewall but it is barely noticeable. Great job Avira.:thumb:

[trjam]

-{ Quote: "So far I have used Avira 8 Premium with Vista Firewall Control (free) and now I am running a trial of of the Suite. I have used the WebGuard with both setups and notice no slowdowns. The firewall in the Suite seems to cause a SLIGHT slowdown over the Vista firewall but it is barely noticeable. Great job Avira.:thumb:" }-
That is good to hear ffreedom. Avira has always strived to create first, compete second, and that attitude is what you want to see in a security vendor. There are others here that also hold this thought, but Avira really does care and if the cake aint perfect, then they are offended from the top on down. You will always get yours moneys worth from them in any product you buy.;)

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: " and install the Proxomitron. It doesn't (at least for me) slow your browsing nor does it interfere with speed tests and it filters out all ads including poisoned ones and does a ton of other things. " }-
Proxo may be good and useful, but in my experience it DOES slow down browsing, and sometimes quite a bit, so for me, the Avira web guard is the best choice as far as performance goes..

Also, here is a brief blurb on the Avira site relating to what you posted earlier on the speed tests and downloading in general:

http://www.avira.com/en/support/kbdetails.php?id=208

[Diver]

Proxo is one of those things that you wind up spending your whole life tweaking. I tried it a few times and gave up.

[Mele20]

I don't tweak Proxo hardly at all. I let Sidki do that and before him JD5000 and before him Scott himself. I am very grateful to the folks who work so hard to provide users with outstanding config sets and currently the main ones are Sidki and Grypen and both configs are excellent and as soon as one is released work is begun on the next set. There are different levels to the config sets and I use the medium level and I do change a few things such as letting Proxo make all cookies Session only as I don't like that as I don't want to have to login here everytime I come here. Every now and again, I will add a filter set that I see from someone who has posted it but that takes very little time. Proxo would be very time consuming if I had to learn to write my own filters but luckily there are wonderful folks who care deeply about Proxo who give a lot of their time to write excellent config sets for us to use. But if Proxo slows you down then I can understand your not wanting to use but for that reason not because it requires tons of care and feeding.

As for Webguard, I cannot use anything that screws with my Speed tests. I guess you all have DSL connections? Those tend to be very steady. I have cable broadband and I need proof to get my ISP to fix problems as my connection sucks much of the time. It is all over the place and I need proof of that and proof of the times (pattern) when it is bad which means running my primary test every ten minutes most of the time. Look at this graph for the last 24 hours.

Besides, Fx, Opera and Safari are unable to load images if Webguard is used and IE cannot load images or text...it is totally broken by Webguard. So, why in the world would I consider using it? Proxo doesn't break image loading and IE also works fine with it.

[Kerodo]

I have cable here with 20+ Mbps speeds, virtually never a problem, so I don't have the need to test my speed like you apparently do Mele. A few years ago I did have some problems, but it turned out to be a dying modem. My ISP people came out, looked things over, gave me a new modem, and everything returned to normal. So perhaps that could be your problem, I don't know..

I'm not sure what happened to your Avira installation, but I have no problems here with the web guard using IE, either on Xp or Win2k. Right now I'm on Win2k. Everything loads fine on pages, no speed issues and so on.

One thing you might consider, since you're using Proxo, it's doing a proxy thing, just as the web guard does, so perhaps both together is a problem? Double proxying must slow things down for sure... or maybe even conflict somehow. I don't know...

But anyway, Avira does well on my current 2k installation, so I can't complain at all. Seems to be the best to me..

[dw426]

Ok, I'm back, not to jump back into the for Webguard/against Webguard argument, but hopefully to help. Melee, for sure having Webguard running and Prox together are very likely to slow things down, just in the way that they work. Your connection could be due to a LOT of things, not just an Http scanner. You could have a faulty modem, a faulty splitter (if one is used), hell, with cable it even depends on how many people in your area use cable internet and how many are on at one time.

Also, try resetting the router if you use one. As far as images and text on some websites, is it possible you may have either A: A faulty or overly strict filter in place, or, B: Filters that are conflicting with each other. Adding filters can be overdone.

[Stefan Kurtzhals]

I am using Proxomitron aswell. No problems because of Webguard with either IE7, Opera or Firefox. The firewall is a different tale, though. :blink:

[Edwin024]

I use Firefox 3 beta 5 and no problems there with Avira working. And the guard scans all pages. I do see pictures and everything else.

[pykko]

-{ Quote: "I use Firefox 3 beta 5 and no problems there with Avira working. And the guard scans all pages. I do see pictures and everything else." }-
the same here.

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "I use Firefox 3 beta 5 and no problems there with Avira working. And the guard scans all pages. I do see pictures and everything else." }-

I was having problems with webguard and I did as a beta tester with V8. That said, and I posted this at the Avira forum, I uninstalled the Security Suite, cleaned out the registry with CCleaner, and reinstalled the program. I also set Firefox's cache to zero (0).

Now, the webguard does not slow down web pages loading, images, etc. I am not sure if Avira changed some code, the Firefox cache setting made a difference, or it was a registry remnant issue or some combination. Whatever the case, Avira is running lighter on my machine than even Dr. Web or Eset. Big thumbs up. :thumb:

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "Ok, I'm back, not to jump back into the for Webguard/against Webguard argument, but hopefully to help. Melee, for sure having Webguard running and Prox together are very likely to slow things down, just in the way that they work. Your connection could be due to a LOT of things, not just an Http scanner. You could have a faulty modem, a faulty splitter (if one is used), hell, with cable it even depends on how many people in your area use cable internet and how many are on at one time.

Also, try resetting the router if you use one. As far as images and text on some websites, is it possible you may have either A: A faulty or overly strict filter in place, or, B: Filters that are conflicting with each other. Adding filters can be overdone." }-

Unfortunately, my connection (everyone's here is also like this) has always been like this for seven years now. I was party to a major complaint with the State of Hawaii regarding Oceanic Time Warner's false advertising years ago when they claimed we would get a certain speed and no one on this island got anywhere like it. There was a terrible bandwidth crunch for Hawaii at the time. That got fixed with 3 major new underwater cables to the Mainland and one to Japan. There is plenty of bandwith now but Oceanic cannot provide decent 5mbps down much less Road Runner Turbo at 8mbps down. It is a joke for most and is not worth the extra $10 a month. Oceanic announced 15mbps service down back in November but then could not provide it. They still cannot provide it. The only way to get them to listen and do anything is to keep extensive speed test records and I own Ping Plotter Pro since the time I got broadband. I was warned I would need Ping Plotter for evidence of the bad speeds, pings, routing by two friends who got Road Runner a year before when it was available on the other side of this island before it came here.

I do have a router (Linksy) and I cannot reset it as it runs beta firmware (old firmware as Linksy has not issued firmware for this router in years and never made any of the beta versions gold) that I can't find now and it has to run that firmware otherwise Ping Plotter cannot work correctly. Even when the author of Ping Plotter told Linksy they needed to make this beta firmware official they didn't bother.

This is not a router problem though nor a modem problem. The modem is only three years old ..a Surfboard 5100. I show excellent modem stats and Oceanic has been out many times to check wiring, drop to this condo building, etc. This is a network problem and always has been (although I have also had physical issues drastically affecting speed ...issues at the node, building amp, etc but those have been fixed and still the erratic speeds and horrible download speeds, always less than 1/2 my advertised speed, when I download programs, etc even from West Coast locations). The tech support manager for Oceanic cable readily admits it is network problem and just says be patient, we are working on it. :( He's been saying that for years. Road Runner was faster, more steady speed when everything from Hawaii went through ATDN. Now everything has been switched to Level3 or tbone and that is not nearly as good as ATDN routing. So, doing speed tests that my ISP respects is extremely important. MySpeed from Visualware is the test they bought for us about three years ago (actually on my recommendation partly as they had been considering Justin's dslr test too). It is used by Time Warner internally also on all Road Runner gateways throughout the nation. So, my ISP likes, understands and respects this particular test and understands the immense amount of information MySpeedAdvanced that I own provides. That is important.

I need to be able to run my ISP's test regularly as well as MySpeed Advanced that I own. I can't do either if I use Webguard. My ISP told me that I should get a "better" Antivirus program. In fact they said they were going to recommend that no one use Avira with Webguard activated as being able to do their speed test is essential when talking with tier 3 (local) tech support about connection problems which are very prevalent in Hawaii. They asked me why I wasn't using an American AV...ugh...and wanted to know why I didn't use CA EZ AntiVirus which is free for all Road Runner users throughout the USA. It's a terrible AV and Road Runner should offer users a better AV free.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "I am using Proxomitron aswell. No problems because of Webguard with either IE7, Opera or Firefox. The firewall is a different tale, though. :blink:" }-

I didn't know you used Proxo! Whose configs? Grypen or Sidki...or do you write your own?

I assumed using two proxies would slow me down further...something was...but then as I have just posted we here in Hawaii, especially on all islands other than Oahu, have serious problems with Time Warner Cable Road Runner ISP and do not get good speed. Some on Oahu get excellent speed but even there the vast majority have the same problems with poor speed that the neighbor island users have. DSL is not available in my area even though I live in the second largest city in Hawaii. Time Warner cable has a monoply for the entire state so there is no choice for me for broadband except Road Runner.

I have not been brave enough to try Avira Premium again (with or without Webguard) since the mess I had with the browsers not working...especially IE..but I have IE6 and maybe it has more problems with Webguard. I also had all restore points after allowing Avira to upgrade internally to ver 8 destroyed. I had 90 points...ALL no good. That was Avira's doing probably because I didn't enter System Volume Information into exclusions quickly enough. (The internal upgrade destroyed all my settings and I had to do all of them all over again). I had intended to go back to a restore point before Avira upgraded. Since I could not do that, I am afraid to try Avira Premium again. The free version works fine.

[Eh_Greg]

-{ Quote: "My ISP told me that I should get a "better" Antivirus program." }- Oh Rly ? No Wai :D


Just because many are experiencing problems with webguard doesn't mean that some other suggestions I see being mentioned are a good alternative. :)

Best Reguards,
CB

"In fact they said they were going to recommend that no one use Avira with Webguard activated as being able to do their speed test is essential when talking with tier 3 (local) tech support about connection problems which are very prevalent in Hawaii. They asked me why I wasn't using an American AV...ugh...and wanted to know why I didn't use CA EZ AntiVirus which is free for all Road Runner users throughout the USA. It's a terrible AV and Road Runner should offer users a better AV free."

[dw426]

-{ Quote: "Oh Rly ? No Wai :D


Just because many are experiencing problems with webguard doesn't mean that some other suggestions I see being mentioned are a good alternative. :)

Best Reguards,
CB

"In fact they said they were going to recommend that no one use Avira with Webguard activated as being able to do their speed test is essential when talking with tier 3 (local) tech support about connection problems which are very prevalent in Hawaii. They asked me why I wasn't using an American AV...ugh...and wanted to know why I didn't use CA EZ AntiVirus which is free for all Road Runner users throughout the USA. It's a terrible AV and Road Runner should offer users a better AV free."" }-

Lol, basically they just told Mele "You know what, unless you use software WE provide, screw you". I know all about monopoly, Insight, Comcast, whoever the hell they are now have a stranglehold on cable internet in Indiana. I have DSL available, if, as I'm told by AT&T, I wasn't too far away from their nearest hub or whatever. I DO get good speeds...when it's actually up and running.


Off topic but I checked out Prox last night. I've heard a lot about it but wouldn't know where to start with it or how to configure all those filters, lol. I'm gonna have to read up on that because I would love to have a good, free way of getting rid of all that crap in IE that I can with AdBlock Plus in FF.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "Lol, basically they just told Mele "You know what, unless you use software WE provide, screw you". I know all about monopoly, Insight, Comcast, whoever the hell they are now have a stranglehold on cable internet in Indiana. I have DSL available, if, as I'm told by AT&T, I wasn't too far away from their nearest hub or whatever. I DO get good speeds...when it's actually up and running.


Off topic but I checked out Prox last night. I've heard a lot about it but wouldn't know where to start with it or how to configure all those filters, lol. I'm gonna have to read up on that because I would love to have a good, free way of getting rid of all that crap in IE that I can with AdBlock Plus in FF." }-

Comcrap is just as bad, if not worse, than Time Warner. AT&T though isn't any better and they are probably going to be the first of the large ISPs in the USA to make a deal with Phorm or the likes. Comcrap though, at least cares about DOCSIS 3.0 and 50 to 100mbps speeds for home users and is rapidly preparing, at least in areas where there is competition from Verizon, etc., whereas, Time Warner has gone on official record just a week or so ago stating that they will not be upgrading speeds or preparing to launch DOCSIS 3.0 because they believe their customers don't care about speed! They actually said that! But AT&T is the one making the loudest noises regarding a deal with Phorm. Be very careful before you think of switching to them.

As for Proxo, you can read the Proxo help file first of all. It will have some confusing stuff but you will grasp the important parts right off the bat and then go to Castle cops and there are three forums there for Proxo. The general Proxo forum was originally hosted by Scott himself and is still active. Grypen's and Sidki's forums are hosted by each respectively and you can download their current configs by clicking on the links there which I think in Grypen's case, as well as Sidki's, takes you to their websites to the download page. Sidki has notes on his download page about how to install the configs (I know more about his because I use his configs). There are pros and cons to each set of configs so you may want to read some in the Castlecops Proxo forums before deciding which one to try first. You can try each but reading first might give you an idea of which you'd maybe like better.

You can ignore, for now, all the stuff in Scott's Proxo help file about writing your own filters. I still don't write any of my own. But if you want to learn to do that...well, that should be put off until you have used Proxo for awhile and understand better how it works. You can still use Scott's last configs which come as part of the download of Proxo. But you will see ads on quite a few sites because those configs are really old now.

There are different levels to the configs (Scott's has six) and Sidki's has 3...not sure for Grypen's. I would leave them on the default config which is "medium" level...like medium heuristics level in an AV. Sidki has some defaults for the display of Google search that I don't care for so I uncheck those but in the beginning just leave it as is. Plus, you might like his changes....lots of users do! Most of his other changes in cleaning up some popular sites I like.

I felt very intimidated when I first got Proxo and there is a learning curve but unless you want to write your own filters the curve is not that steep and you can ask questions in the three forums or here. I would leave HTTPS coverage alone for the time being. Scott was leary of Proxo doing it and recommended against users doing it. I have never installed the necessary files for Proxo to do HTTPS. It doesn't bother me if I see a few ads on my banking site. You may want to have Proxo filter HTTPS but again no need to make that decision right now. You will want to read up on the pros and cons of that and I'd say put that on the back burner for awhile and get used to Proxo filtering everything except HTTPS first.

[dw426]

Thanks Mele, I'll be looking into Prox tonight then.

[19monty64]

And now, back to... "AVIRA 8 Release Notes - Now released!"

[dw426]

-{ Quote: "And now, back to... "AVIRA 8 Release Notes - Now released!"" }-

Lol, you just decided to write a "let's get back on topic" post that hasn't had any activity in close to 2 days? Now that's boredom.

[Jadda]

Is this a bug? It's sure annoying.

[Xenophobe]

-{ Quote: "Is this a bug? It's sure annoying." }-
I have the same problem.

[ethan_arends]

It's not a bug, virus definition are old.

[Edwin024]

I do find it a bit stupid that Avira has put this thing into the info screen, while they are the ones not bringing out definition updates in the weekend...

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "I do find it a bit stupid that Avira has put this thing into the info screen, while they are the ones not bringing out definition updates in the weekend..." }-

Well, change your notification time. Set it to two days and you won't see the yellow exclamation point.

[pykko]

I set it to 3 days to be even much certain. Anyway, if it is set to automatically update there is no problem.

[s4u]

-{ Quote: "I set it to 3 days to be even much certain. Anyway, if it is set to automatically update there is no problem." }-
That's correct

[19monty64]

-{ Quote: "Lol, you just decided to write a "let's get back on topic" post that hasn't had any activity in close to 2 days? Now that's boredom." }-
~BUMP~ seemed more boring... ;D

[LoneWolf]

Well after two failed attempts to install version 8, I decieded to try one more time. :o

199563

Third times a charm I guess. ;D

[pykko]

3 is the perfect number :argh: ;D Glad to see it's working nice for you also.

[Quitch]

After years of running naked, a recent work project has inspired me to try out anti-virus. This is more out of a sense of fun than feeling the need to be secure, and certainly some of the people on this forum do appear rather paranoid. I run Windows Firewall (behind a home router w/ firewall), Secunia PSI (https://psi.secunia.com/), automatic Windows updates and whatever AV I'm trying out. For me performance is of utmost importance, if I'm going to have a background task it better damn well act like a background task. Thus my first stop was NOD32, a scanner which seems both top notch in detection and fast in its performance. However, I couldn't resist the lure of AntiVir the scanner with great performance reports and fantastic detection, I had to try it out. Alas, thus far I'm disappointed. Not for any reason to do with detection, but simply the fact that the product lacks polish in many, many areas.

I started with an install of AntiVir 7 from the link earlier in the thread, this then promptly updated to v8 and asked to reboot. So far so good. But that's where the good ended.

Firstly, WebGuard isn't installed, WebGuard isn't offered... I see reports of needing two reboots, but nothing of the sort should be required, it should be offered during the update not at some randomish point in the future. I shouldn't need to read a thread like this to trek into the control panel to install it.

The GUI is slow, no question. I want snap from my desktop, and the GUI has the feeling of treacle. If anyone has ever used the ATI Catalyst Control Centre the feeling is very familiar.

Next, it defaults its online protection status to Enabled before it checks whether they're enabled or not!! Should you not linger on this screen for five seconds you will think you are protected even if you're not. Nor are errors here indicated by the status tray icon. My MailScanner is generating an Unknown error, while WebGuard is sitting in Service Stopped status. The manual says I should click the Enable link, except no such link exists. I had to try and start the service manually via the Services MMC to get the error code to report to AntiVir.

Support is really lacking. Where as with ESET I can get e-mail support (the few trial questions I had were helpfully answered), with AntiVir being a home user feels like being a second class citizen, forced to post to a forum which you need to register on! Having a paid for version I would expect something better than this.

The help file is also a little lacking. It tells me that Low priority is the default for Scan... it's not, Medium is. Whether this is to do with the upgrade or not I don't know, but the fact is that the default scan setting doesn't match their own recommendation!

The help file problems continue, though this is a rather subjective problem. They don't tell me whether upping the heuristics will incur a performance penalty. They don't say they will, but whenever a scanning tool does more I expect a hit, therefore the help file should explicitly lay out whether or not this will be the case, if only to lay fears to rest. If there's a hit I would use their recommended Medium, otherwise I'd use High and then rollback if I begin to get FPs.

Let me pause briefly to give a thumbs up to the context help, I like this kind of instant tooltip, we need more of that.

I dislike that I cannot edit my exceptions, and despite having a 6000 character limit for them, and having space beneath the file entry box, the exceptions box is stuck in a corner where you can barely see the beginnings of the file path. I do wish AV scanners would start using the Microsoft recommended Windows exceptions (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/822158) in their default setups, or at least offer the option during installation.

I was surprised to see it is using file extension lists, I thought those had gone out of fashion. I see All Files as the default in almost every product I've encountered recently.

Finally, no matter how many times I check it, Project jobfiles continues to uncheck itself.

At least the product integrates with UAC correctly, even if it keeps refering to elevated privileges as administrator rights, which they aren't.

I was looking at AntiVir as an alternative to NOD32, since it seems to compete with it for detection and speed, and importantly, beat it in price. However, this experience has left me disappointed compared to the much smoother NOD32 trial run I had a couple of weeks ago. A fresh install might prove different, but that really shouldn't be needed when even video card drivers have managed to create working upgrade installers.

EDIT: Had a virus detection (which I believe is either a FP or me being over aggressive with what I want it to find) and so used the Virus Information link. Turns out this is a rather mis-leading label as it in fact goes to the main virus database and the name of the virus is the link to information about it.

EDIT2: Urgh, and you can't restore multiple objects, you have to do them one... by one... by one...

[Diver]

Webguard working without issues here on FF 2.14.

Some of you out there, brevity is the soul of wit.

[subset]

-{ Quote: "
I was looking at AntiVir as an alternative to NOD32, since it seems to compete with it for detection and speed, and importantly, beat it in price. However, this experience has left me disappointed compared to the much smoother NOD32 trial run I had a couple of weeks ago." }-
Avira Premium 6 month license free... Avira Premium is cheaper than others...
No wonder that Avira Premium is very popular.
What I really don't like, are this nagscreens on reboot or when you open up the GUI.

199567

There is no option within the GUI to deactivate this nagscreens, just commandline junk as a workaround.
This is absolutely unreasonable for a paid program.

Cheers

[Macstorm]

-{ Quote: "There is no option within the GUI to deactivate this nagscreens, just commandline junk as a workaround.
This is absolutely unreasonable for a paid program.

Cheers" }-
It seems that you'll have to get use to it ;D

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "There is no option within the GUI to deactivate this nagscreens, just commandline junk as a workaround.
This is absolutely unreasonable for a paid program.

Cheers" }-
That isn't a nag screen, it's just a splash screen, tons of programs have that, and it's nothing to be annoyed about. Get over it and focus on something that actually matters....

[LoneWolf]

-{ Quote: "That isn't a nag screen, it's just a splash screen, tons of programs have that, and it's nothing to be annoyed about. Get over it and focus on something that actually matters...." }-

Yeah, a nag screen would be nagging you to buy it.

[subset]

-{ Quote: "Yeah, a nag screen would be nagging you to buy it." }-
So you mean this nag screens are a preventive measure.
To make sure you will buy it again. :lurking:

Cheers

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "It seems that you'll have to get use to it ;D" }-

Not really. There are other AV out there. Avira has produced a horrible GUI in ver 8. Very unintuitive, whereas, 7's GUI was great and easy to use. I spend way, way too much time finding something in the new GUI and then I forget where they stashed it because it is an such extremely dumb interface...so the next time, I have to look all around again. That drop down crap with the administrative tools...why have something so anti intutive like that?

Then there is that horrible splash screen on the GUI that makes the GUI take FOREVER to open. I shouldn't be forced to wait and wait and wait for it open and also have to look at the dumb splash screen every time. I don't mind the splash on boot because I seldom boot the computer and I have other splash screens on boot which I have never wanted to get rid of, but I open the GUI a lot...or I used to ...now with ver 8 I avoid any interaction and use the GUI only if I feel I absolutely must because I hate it and it is so damn slow! It is a real crime to take the almost perfect ver 7 GUI and mess with like this. It doesn't even display properly...stuff runs off the right side on some screens because it is not wide enough now with that ridiculous, worthless drop down junk on the left side.

On top of ruining a beautiful, wonderful GUI, Avira has produced a Vista. I agree with most of what the PC Reviewer says...except, ironically, he likes the new GUI that I dislike so much. But otherwise I pretty much agree with him. His experience with Guard made me laugh. You have to keep Guard killed about half the time, or stop it from starting with ProcessGuard, because it's too difficult to exclude everything that needs to be excluded and Guard goes nuts when you do a search for files and folders and won't stop with the popup warnings even when you repeatedly tell it to. We asked for an easier way to exclude but Avira ignored us.

Avira's beta was a sham. It wasn't a beta. We were just guinea pigs for them to see if the stuff they had done worked right. Nothing we suggested was put into 8 ...look at the wish list. 8 was a done deal before the beta started. We asked for a way to get rid of that splash screen when opening the GUI and, like everything else, we were told no way to that and no way planned. We were lectured and treated as though we were small, naughty children if we actually dared to not kiss ass on the beta forum but say what we thought.

The PC Reviewer should have mentioned that you pay for the product and there is no decent support if you are home user. There should be email support for home users who buy the product. After the weekend here it is Tuesday in Germany and no Avira techs on the forum since last Friday. Was Monday a holiday in Germany?

Guard is great if put on a clean computer. But Guard is the only outstanding thing about Avira now.

[LoneWolf]

-{ Quote: "So you mean this nag screens are a preventive measure.
To make sure you will buy it again. :lurking:

Cheers" }-

It's called a splash screen. ;)
A nag screen would nag you. :dry:
Sounds like the splash screen just annoys you. :o
Maybe you can get them to rename it to the annoy screen. :wacko:

[subset]

-{ Quote: "
Maybe you can get them to rename it to the annoy screen. :wacko:" }-
Total agreement, this was the concept for the design of my Avira nag splash screen.
"This is a nag screen! Yes, to annoy you!"
Annoyance, that's all.

BTW, I posted the same pic in german section of Avira forums about a month ago and told them about their nag splash screen.
Most of them showed stubborn resistance against my constructive criticism, even ordinary users seemed to love this nag splash screens.
Nearly the same here... Very strange. :doubt:

Cheers

[JasSolo]

-{ Quote: "Avira Premium 6 month license free... Avira Premium is cheaper than others...
No wonder that Avira Premium is very popular.
What I really don't like, are this nagscreens on reboot or when you open up the GUI.

199567

There is no option within the GUI to deactivate this nagscreens, just commandline junk as a workaround.
This is absolutely unreasonable for a paid program.

Cheers" }-


Try this. It worked with version 7.
Open the regeditor and find this key. Put in the nosplash in the end.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"avgnt"="C:\Program Files\AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium\avgnt.exe\" /min /nosplash


Cheers

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "Try this. It worked with version 7.
Open the regeditor and find this key. Put in the nosplash in the end.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"avgnt"="C:\Program Files\AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium\avgnt.exe\" /min /nosplash


Cheers" }-


Won't work on the GUI splash screen. Avira told us in the beta it will still work on the boot splash screen but not the one where it is so irritating. At least it is a pretty picture but even pretty pictures that serve no function are not so pretty after awhile.

[FRug]

Mele: The splash doesn't delay loading, it is displayed during loading. I'm not sure what gives you the impression that the splash screen just sits there while nothing else is happening. That certainly isn't the case which you can easily check with some process monitoring tools. I for one like splash screens for apps that take longer to initialize, at least i know i properly clicked the link before the fully initialized GUI appears :)

[Mele20]

The point is that avira 8 GUI loads much more slowly than avira 7 GUI. Plus, the splash screen is completely unnecessary when booting or opening the GUI. Why have unnecessary junk cluttering up the AV...especially the GUI? I have never seen an AV before that insisted on loading a splash screen before loading the GUI. It's really dumb.

I don't see why Avira didn't allow us to keep the skin for ver 7 if we wanted. It was so superior. The GUI was the main reason I got Avira and now they go and ruin a great GUI for a crappy, nonintuitive, slow one.

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "Try this. It worked with version 7.
Open the regeditor and find this key. Put in the nosplash in the end.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
"avgnt"="C:\Program Files\AntiVir PersonalEdition Premium\avgnt.exe\" /min /nosplash


Cheers" }-

It works on Version 8 for both the suite and the premium program.

[Nike_P]

-{ Quote: "Avira Premium 6 month license free... Avira Premium is cheaper than others...
No wonder that Avira Premium is very popular.
What I really don't like, are this nagscreens on reboot or when you open up the GUI.

199567

There is no option within the GUI to deactivate this nagscreens, just commandline junk as a workaround.
This is absolutely unreasonable for a paid program.

Cheers" }-

I love the Umbrella GUI, it's beautiful.';)

[trjam]

I agree, the GUI looks great just as the product.:thumb:

[FRug]

Also, you can use a link ony your desktop with "avcenter.exe /nosplash". Of course this won't influence the tray icon.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "It works on Version 8 for both the suite and the premium program." }-

It does NOT work on the GUI and that is where the fix is needed. No need to worry about a splash screen on boot...who boots these days? You only boot on Microsoft Tuesday. :D

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "I love the Umbrella GUI, it's beautiful.';)" }-

Yes, the umbrella is pretty but that is not the point. I can't believe all of you love the sluggishness of the GUI now. It takes forever to open and the reason is because of that damn splash screen. Avira said that was the reason already! But they refuse to fix it. :(

Plus, now it is Tuesday afternoon in Germany and STILL NO TECH SUPPORT AT AVIRA FORUM SINCE LAST FRIDAY. UNACCEPTABLE FOR A PAID PRODUCT. You are all sheep and that is why all the AV vendors get away with murder and we have such bad products to choose from. :(

Obviously, the best solution these days is to strive to get other security products so we no longer need AV as none of them are good anymore.

[FRug]

-{ Quote: "Yes, the umbrella is pretty but that is not the point. I can't believe all of you love the sluggishness of the GUI now. It takes forever to open and the reason is because of that damn splash screen. Avira said that was the reason already! But they refuse to fix it. :(
" }-
Where do they state that? I've never read that anywhere. I tried it with deactivated splash, and it takes _exactly_ the same amount of time to load the GUI: 2-3 seconds for me, depending on which of my systems i try it with.

[waters]

If you think no av is good then that says it all.

[Leo2005]

-{ Quote: "If you think no av is good then that says it all." }-cause an av can only be god if it has a gui that pleases mele.
i cannot read this discussion anymore about the gui. it wont be changed till the next version. same for the splashscreen. if you have such a big problem with this change the av, but do not insist always on the same things. there are much more important features for an av then gui and splashscreen.

and for the tech support on the avira forum. they were even online on the weekend. when visiting the forum in the week you'll see at least one avira supporter online.

[The_Duality]

Well, I have to agree with Mele if I am honest. The new GUI, pretty as it is, is quite slow and unresponsive compared to the old one. Im getting random guard service crashes, and my 2 page, 25 reply thread on the issue has now been relegated to the forum's second page. It is full of people having the same issues. I posted everything they wanted, i.e. log files, HJT logs, etc, and still nothing. Pretty poor support if you ask me, considering the bug is crippling - not just a random GUI bug.

Im afraid the time has come for me to move on. Great detection results in tests mean nothing to me if the product doesnt work. Next time it crashes, it may be just in time to let in a nasty - you never know. Good job im using a free 6 month license, and I didn't have to shell out for it.

I am under no illusion, however, that it is not a good AV - it just doesn't work for me. I hope everyone else doesnt get the issues I experienced.

[subset]

-{ Quote: " there are much more important features for an av then gui and splashscreen." }-
Agree, let's take a look at more important features like packer support :ouch: or self-protection :P or active infections treatment :gack:

Cheers

[Macstorm]

-{ Quote: "If you think no av is good then that says it all." }-
:thumb:

TOO MUCH complaining about a 'splash screen' :wacko:

[Killtek]

-{ Quote: "
Im afraid the time has come for me to move on. Great detection results in tests mean nothing to me if the product doesnt work. Next time it crashes, it may be just in time to let in a nasty - you never know. Good job im using a free 6 month license, and I didn't have to shell out for it.

I am under no illusion, however, that it is not a good AV - it just doesn't work for me. I hope everyone else doesnt get the issues I experienced." }-

I understand you and some others are having issues with crashing (and it sucks), but what about folks like me that have ZER0 problems with WebGuard and the application as a whole. I have SafeSpace and Threatfire running alongside Avira without any slowdowns or crashes. Are we the minority?

As for the GUI being slow.. seriously, 2-3 seconds to come up isn't torture. Honestly how many times do you need to go into the GUI? Once you fine tuned everything.

[The_Duality]

-{ Quote: "I understand you and some others are having issues with crashing (and it sucks), but what about folks like me that have ZER0 problems with WebGuard and the application as a whole. I have SafeSpace and Threatfire running alongside Avira without any slowdowns or crashes. Are we the minority?

As for the GUI being slow.. seriously, 2-3 seconds to come up isn't torture. Honestly how many times do you need to go into the GUI? Once you fine tuned everything." }-

You are probably the majority - otherwise this entire forum would be filled with Avira bashing ;)

Avira is a great program, its just not working for me - probably some sort of incompatibility that I am yet to discover.

I understand where you are coming from with the GUI - but it is not the wait that annoys me, its the "feel". It just feels slow.

[waters]

Just use what is right for you.I tried avg 8 yesterday and for me that was slow.There was a delay in page loading that i dont have with Avira.Other than that i like the looks of avg and i prefer the way it is set out ,but back to Avira because i will not use anything that causes slowdown.
Do i moan about avg,no because it works for others but not for me, so i move on and get on with life.

[Macstorm]

-{ Quote: "Just use what is right for you.I tried avg 8 yesterday and for me that was slow." }-
the 'free' version?

[trjam]

I think the masses speak for the excellence of this product.;)

[waters]

Yes free version,looks great but slow and i will follow comments to its progress

[Killtek]

-{ Quote: "
I understand where you are coming from with the GUI - but it is not the wait that annoys me, its the "feel". It just feels slow." }-

You know the Germans, they like the industrial look and feel :)

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "

As for the GUI being slow.. seriously, 2-3 seconds to come up isn't torture. Honestly how many times do you need to go into the GUI? Once you fine tuned everything." }-

I open the GUI 5-6 times a day! What do you mean you don't need to go to the GUI? Contrary to what Avira would like us to accept, the GUI is important. I stated from when I first got Avira 7 that a main reason was because of the GUI. So, of course, I would be upset when it got changed so much. I also stated another main reason I got Avira was because it didn't have a bunch of gunk like Norton and many others do now. Now it has gunk, especially the Suite, and the PCmag reviewer has slamned Avira for having a poor Suite and stated correctly, as I have, that Guard is outstanding but the rest of Avira needs more work.

Yeah, let's focus on more "important" things...ok...where's the 7zip support...we still don't have it probably because Avira spent time on a new GUI that wasn't needed. LukeFilewalker needs a lot of work but Avira sticks a crappy backup thingy in the Suite instead. There are other important things like allowing us to run a full scan and not having to be glued to our computers throughout but get a report with the scanner asking what to do at the END OF THE SCAN like every other AV in the world does already. And where is the protection for Avira..yeah, I can't kill Guard from Task Manager...well that is just a beginning of protection.

Where is better cleaning ability? Avira is FANTASTIC as far as Guard goes but if you already have an infection and get Avira or get a virus before Avira has detection...cleaning is poor. Why not leave the ver 7 GUI and concentrate on other stuff that is important? The reason evidently is because some people expect a new GUI every year and will slam an AV if there isn't a new one...like the PCmag reviewer who slammed Avira for the ver7 GUI that I think is much better than the new one. He evidently falls in the camp of change for change's sake rather than change because it is needed. Evidently, the folks in the change for change's sake only rule much software...including Microsoft with the disastrous Vista that gets more disastrous every day.

[Kerodo]

-{ Quote: "I open the GUI 5-6 times a day!

(lots of verbiage snipped)

including Microsoft with the disastrous Vista that gets more disastrous every day." }-
Is it safe to assume that if there were something better, you'd be using it? :)

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "Is it safe to assume that if there were something better, you'd be using it? :)" }-

I am. I'm using XP. :D (and my free Vista Ultimate disks should be here today and will likely gather dust on a shelf). :P

[Bunkhouse Buck]

-{ Quote: "It does NOT work on the GUI and that is where the fix is needed. No need to worry about a splash screen on boot...who boots these days? You only boot on Microsoft Tuesday. :D" }-

I disagree. I am talking specifically about removing the nosplash screen via the registry fix. It works- it is indisputable. However, I am no longer using Avira, as I have some other technical issues with both the Premium and the Suite. Dr. Web runs better on my systems.

[rookieman]

I had a Vista problem that's why I couldn't get it working.I got that fixed and installed the new version,I do get a small slow down with Webguard.I turned it off and it seems to be running fast.Is there a way you can tune Webguard?

[trjam]

-{ Quote: "I had a Vista problem that's why I couldn't get it working.I got that fixed and installed the new version,I do get a small slow down with Webguard.I turned it off and it seems to be running fast.Is there a way you can tune Webguard?" }-
Look at what you wrote. "Small slow down." Now I get none but even if I got a "Small slow down," would that not be worth every penny of what the scanner can do. You cant tune it but it works very, very well. So a small trade off but essential in my view.;)

[trjam]

One last thought, it works so well for me that I uninstalled Sandboxie with it.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "I disagree. I am talking specifically about removing the nosplash screen via the registry fix. It works- it is indisputable. However, I am no longer using Avira, as I have some other technical issues with both the Premium and the Suite. Dr. Web runs better on my systems." }-


That removes it on boot. I like it on boot because I seldom boot so it is not irritating and it is pretty. I just want it gone on the GUI and it does not remove it on the GUI. I was told in the beta forum by Avira that there was no way to remove it on the GUI.

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "Look at what you wrote. "Small slow down." Now I get none but even if I got a "Small slow down," would that not be worth every penny of what the scanner can do. You cant tune it but it works very, very well. So a small trade off but essential in my view.;)" }-

Nope. It wouldn't be worth it. Proxo is worth it. Any AV's web scanner is never worth it. Get Proxo instead. Then you see no ads and you have considerable protection and you see the web the way YOU want to see it...not like some webmaster thinks you should see it. And Proxo is free. Proxo doesn't interfere with speed tests either.

[waters]

I agree ,a slowdown for me would not be worth it,but what you fail to understand is not everyone has this problem.

[Boost]

-{ Quote: "I open the GUI 5-6 times a day! What do you mean you don't need to go to the GUI? Contrary to what Avira would like us to accept, the GUI is important. I stated from when I first got Avira 7 that a main reason was because of the GUI. So, of course, I would be upset when it got changed so much. I also stated another main reason I got Avira was because it didn't have a bunch of gunk like Norton and many others do now. Now it has gunk, especially the Suite, and the PCmag reviewer has slamned Avira for having a poor Suite and stated correctly, as I have, that Guard is outstanding but the rest of Avira needs more work.

Yeah, let's focus on more "important" things...ok...where's the 7zip support...we still don't have it probably because Avira spent time on a new GUI that wasn't needed. LukeFilewalker needs a lot of work but Avira sticks a crappy backup thingy in the Suite instead. There are other important things like allowing us to run a full scan and not having to be glued to our computers throughout but get a report with the scanner asking what to do at the END OF THE SCAN like every other AV in the world does already. And where is the protection for Avira..yeah, I can't kill Guard from Task Manager...well that is just a beginning of protection.

Where is better cleaning ability? Avira is FANTASTIC as far as Guard goes but if you already have an infection and get Avira or get a virus before Avira has detection...cleaning is poor. Why not leave the ver 7 GUI and concentrate on other stuff that is important? The reason evidently is because some people expect a new GUI every year and will slam an AV if there isn't a new one...like the PCmag reviewer who slammed Avira for the ver7 GUI that I think is much better than the new one. He evidently falls in the camp of change for change's sake rather than change because it is needed. Evidently, the folks in the change for change's sake only rule much software...including Microsoft with the disastrous Vista that gets more disastrous every day." }-


You seriously have wayyyy too much time on your hands if your opening the GUI that many times a day! Configure antivir and be done with it! You shouldnt need to mess with settings on a daily basis. Thats very abnormal,are you paranoid or whats the deal?:doubt:

[waters]

3 seconds is a long time

[The_Duality]

-{ Quote: "You seriously have wayyyy too much time on your hands if your opening the GUI that many times a day! Configure antivir and be done with it! You shouldnt need to mess with settings on a daily basis. Thats very abnormal,are you paranoid or whats the deal?:doubt:" }-

For some of us, Internet Security is more of a personal interest/hobby than just something you install and forget about. It is for me, anyway - am I just that strange that I find malware and detection methods fascinating, whilst everyone else does not? :P

[Mele20]

-{ Quote: "You seriously have wayyyy too much time on your hands if your opening the GUI that many times a day! Configure antivir and be done with it! You shouldnt need to mess with settings on a daily basis. Thats very abnormal,are you paranoid or whats the deal?:doubt:" }-

I know Avira. That is why I open it frequently. I'm not getting caught ever again with no updates for FIVE days because Avira can't properly notify you when there is corruption which happens more often than one would expect. The only way I found out that update was failing for five days...updating every hour...but not really was because I looked at the logs finally. I was told by Avira support to open the GUI at LEAST ONCE A DAY AND CHECK TO MAKE SURE THE UPDATE HAD ACTUALLY OCCURRED. That is the only way to know.

So, if Avira ever gives us a way from mouse hover over the tray icon to let us know there is corruption and update is failing every time then perhaps I would not open the GUI so frequently. I had update on invisible then as that popup every hour should be left upper corner, left lower corner, center of the screen but never upper right corner where it is and it is irritating. But even on minimize it appears update is successful when it is not. I had the corruption another time when I had it on minimize and it looked like the update was successful but it wasn't. You cannot trust anything but the log itself and to reach the log you need to open the GUI. Besides, Avira just loves to stick stuff that is harmless (way too many FP's) in Quarantine (less of that since Avira changed the default for extended threat categories). I need to open the GUI to to restore them. Further, how would I do a scan if I didn't open the GUI? And I don't mean scan from the main screen. I have never done one of those. But a custom configured scan...it has to be configured from the GUI. If I want to run a rootkit scan, I have to open the GUI. Avira configured that really crazy. No one who depends on LukeFilewalker a lot can have rootkit scan checked in the GUI. In fact, Avira support told me to never have that checked but to simply open the GUI and run a rootkit scan when I wanted to do so.

It sounds to me like you have very little experience with Avira.

[Boost]

-{ Quote: "I know Avira. That is why I open it frequently. I'm not getting caught ever again with no updates for FIVE days because Avira can't properly notify you when there is corruption which happens more often than one would expect. The only way I found out that update was failing for five days...updating every hour...but not really was because I looked at the logs finally. I was told by Avira support to open the GUI at LEAST ONCE A DAY AND CHECK TO MAKE SURE THE UPDATE HAD ACTUALLY OCCURRED. That is the only way to know.

So, if Avira ever gives us a way from mouse hover over the tray icon to let us know there is corruption and update is failing every time then perhaps I would not open the GUI so frequently. I had update on invisible then as that popup every hour should be left upper corner, left lower corner, center of the screen but never upper right corner where it is and it is irritating. But even on minimize it appears update is successful when it is not. I had the corruption another time when I had it on minimize and it looked like the update was successful but it wasn't. You cannot trust anything but the log itself and to reach the log you need to open the GUI. Besides, Avira just loves to stick stuff that is harmless (way too many FP's) in Quarantine (less of that since Avira changed the default for extended threat categories). I need to open the GUI to to restore them. Further, how would I do a scan if I didn't open the GUI? And I don't mean scan from the main screen. I have never done one of those. But a custom configured scan...it has to be configured from the GUI. If I want to run a rootkit scan, I have to open the GUI. Avira configured that really crazy. No one who depends on LukeFilewalker a lot can have rootkit scan checked in the GUI. In fact, Avira support told me to never have that checked but to simply open the GUI and run a rootkit scan when I wanted to do so.

It sounds to me like you have very little experience with Avira." }-

I've been running Avira since version 6 so yeah,I know how Avira runs / behaves.

It's a good thing some of ya'll dont work on automobiles as you'd be checkin the oil daily,checkin to make sure the oil plug is tight,check tire pressure daily, make sure all is right :argh: but hey to each his own I guess.

[Johnny123]

-{ Quote: " Further, how would I do a scan if I didn't open the GUI? And I don't mean scan from the main screen. I have never done one of those. But a custom configured scan...it has to be configured from the GUI. If I want to run a rootkit scan, I have to open the GUI. Avira configured that really crazy. No one who depends on LukeFilewalker a lot can have rootkit scan checked in the GUI. In fact, Avira support told me to never have that checked but to simply open the GUI and run a rootkit scan when I wanted to do so.

It sounds to me like you have very little experience with Avira." }-

When you configure the scan you want, there's a button on the top to make a shortcut to the desktop. You can do this for your custom scan, a rootkit scan or anything else on that page. I have a shortcut for scanning the system partition and a rootkit scan, which I moved from the desktop to the quick launch menu. No need to open the GUI, just click an icon. BTW, this isn't a new feature, it was in the previous versions as well.

[Macstorm]

-{ Quote: "It's a good thing some of ya'll dont work on automobiles as you'd be checkin the oil daily,checkin to make sure the oil plug is tight,check tire pressure daily, make sure all is right :argh: but hey to each his own I guess." }-
LOL
Nice analogy ;)

[trjam]

Uninformed children should not brush Mele aside so quickly. Being critical, but truthful, only comes with an unfortunate price Mele.:-[

[The Hammer]

-{ Quote: "When you configure the scan you want, there's a button on the top to make a shortcut to the desktop. You can do this for your custom scan, a rootkit scan or anything else on that page. I have a shortcut for scanning the system partition and a rootkit scan, which I moved from the desktop to the quick launch menu. No need to open the GUI, just click an icon. BTW, this isn't a new feature, it was in the previous versions as well." }-Opening the GUI is often a personal preference thing. I open it a lot with my choice of Av even though I can access the majority of the setting via left click of the system tray icon. Oh, and I don't get a splash screen when I do so. So if the splash screen is a problem either by the amount of time it takes or it's mere presence Avira should speed it up or eliminate it.

[waters]

What crap,if we all had the same preferences we would all be driving the same cars.The GUI is personal preference and Avira offers great protection,if it wont work for someone on their system or they dont like the looks they should move on

[Boost]

-{ Quote: "LOL
Nice analogy ;)" }-

;D Thanks

In all honesty,if Mele20 wants to open Avira up 20 times day,more power to him. For me,it's just kinda funny seeing people be so partiular about software,when there's so much more to life to enjoy!

Just me though :)

[ccsito]

Since Avira stopped supporting Windows 98, I won't have to deal with any icon lag or anything else related to it or any server update access problems on those computers. :D

[Quitch]

Alas, the Avira support forum hasn't been able to resolve my issue with Mail and Web Guard, so it's back to NOD32 for me. Shame, because Avira seemed to have all the elements of NOD32 which I liked, at a lower price.

[The_Duality]

Same here - I have waited for days on their forum, and seen several people with the same problem as me (crashing guard service) post too. I've stuck Avast on for now - we shall see what happens.

[Jadda]

I have some problems with the Antivur Guard. I get this message in Vista: "On Access scanner has stopped working".

Then the Guard turn intself off, and I manually have to turn it on. Does anyone else has this problem? It is really annoying to leave the computer for some hours, and when you come back the guard is off, and the computer is unprotected.

I don't want to uninstall Avira, since it's a great antivirus, which has worked flawless on my computer until now. It's to bad if the problem does not have any solution.

[Nike_P]

i think this issue will be fixed by tomorrow or Monday, at a upgrade database.