Avira

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by JerryM, Apr 16, 2013.

  1. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Is the ugly Launcher GUI, is the difficulty to reach the AV GUI, is the useless services running for nothing.
     
  2. Spartan

    Spartan Registered Member

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    Guess it's time to put my 3 year Avira AV Pro license to collect dust then. Bye Bye Avira.
     
  3. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I've just bought a 3 years/3 devices license for an unbeatable price (thanks Anon!), and of course the download is the latest version, which comes with the dreaded launcher.

    Well it is true having only Avira Pro, the launcher does not seem to have a good reason to exist, but on the other hand it launches the Avira GUI at lightning speed when needed, also by right clicking the Avira icon on the tray one skips the launcher altogether...

    Last but hardly least how many times do I need to access the Avira GUI once the program is configured? Once a month would probably be too often... Which means I can really forget what the launcher does or looks like. It can also be uninstalled from 'Programs and Features' it has a separate entry from the Avira main program.
     
  4. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Really?
    Please try to uninstall it and tell us the results........
    -----------------------------
    In order to check if you have the latest VDF :

    a) Without Launcher =
    1) Right click in taskbar icon -> 2) from drop-down menu select "About Avira Antivirus Pro".

    b) With Launcher =
    1) Right click in taskbar icon -> 2) from drop-down menu select "Manage Antivirus" ->
    3) The Avira GUI opens -> 4) select "Help" -> 5) from drop-down menu select "About Avira Antivirus Pro".
    Nice and easy........ :mad:
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Jul 28, 2016
  5. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I just did, and you are right (is Anon ever wrong?). It is pretty stupid to have a separate entry that offers an inexistent option. However not a problem for me, as the launcher doesn't bother me. Some people may not like it for all sorts of reasons, but it's not a big deal really.

    Here at Wilders we tend to be austere in our approach to security, just an AV, no frills and bloat, but lots of people not really involved with security may like to download programs that sideline the main activity of the AV, sync all their devices, speed up their system, browser safety and what not. A false sense of security perhaps, but a good source of income from their point of view.
     
  6. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    As I mentioned, I've recently bought a 3 years/3 devices license for a great price. Unfortunately the license was activated on the day of purchase and not merged automatically with my current license which expires next year. As a result instead of 2020 as an expiry date I got 2019...

    After sending an email to Avira customer service, and explaining what happened, they replied within 2 hours stating the problem has been rectified... Pretty fast service, I'm impressed...
     
  7. LocoSec

    LocoSec Registered Member

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    Nice! Thank you for the feedback! We're glad to hear that you had a good service experience with our support colleagues! :thumb:
     
  8. guest

    guest Guest

    Last 3 bullets

    please note that Avira Launcher 1.2.68 is now available for beta testing

    Big Launcher UI enabled

    The new launcher design was created based on various customer research and reviews we had conducted over the past several months. The new launcher UI is just first step in bringing more powerful features that users really care about.
    In this version we are introducing the following:

    • Bigger size of the window to make it easy for users to visualize various Avira offered services
    • Seamless way for users to adopt one or more Avira services to protect them
    • Provide quick actions for interacting with Avira Antivirus service that users cares about most
    • Look at the last alert from Antivirus service
    Enhancements:

    • Impact on the windows startup has been reduced
     
  9. Tom111

    Tom111 Registered Member

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    @anon

    Did you already tried to uninstall it with GeekUninstaller?
     
  10. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    I gave Avira Free a try today, after having not use it for a long time. I'm not quite sure why, but at one point it had three scans running at once. It wanted to start a fourth scan, but wasn't able to. I received a popup saying that there was a maximum of three scans. My laptop only has a Core 2 Duo processor. As a result, having multiple scans running at once causes a major drop in performance.

    There were a few files quarantined that I restored. Maybe a new scan process was started each time I restored a file. I really have no idea. At one point I wanted to restore a large number of quarantined files. I selected all of the files and chose to restore them. Rather than giving me a single confirmation prompt for all the files, I received many prompts. At first, tt appeared it was prompting for every single file - and there would be about maybe 6 to 8 confirmation Windows open at the same time. However, I'm not so sure, as there were about 170 files to be restored, and while I did allow a large number of prompts, I doubt it was that many. Perhaps, not all the files were restored. I didn't bother checking, and have uninstalled Avira.

    I wanted to try Avira again, as according to recent test results it is very light. This is the most important factor for me when it comes to choosing security software, as my Core 2 Duo CPU has performance issues with most antiviruses. Aside from the issues I had, that fact that there is no option, not to automatically quarantine files detected by the real time protection, is reason enough for me not to use it. Maybe this does not matter to the majority of users, but, it is a big issue for me.
     
  11. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    As I already said in post #4317 , above workaround not works any longer.

    You can remove it by using a third-party uninstaller, but the next day it gets reinstalled itself automatically by performing an update to the product, so it’s better to disable it. After that, you won’t notice its icon in the tray or it won’t load automatically on Windows startup and you’ll see the normal Avira antivirus icon in systray area.

    There is another workaround that really works.... ;)
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2016
  12. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Mistake.
     
  13. Tom111

    Tom111 Registered Member

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    GeekUninstaller is a third-party uninstaller. ;-)

    But yeah, I did meant by doing a 'force uninstall' of the launcher, not the ordinary way via 'programs and features'.

    By the way, a heads-up if you disable the 'Avira.SystrayStartTrigger.exe' in Ccleaner from automatic startup in Windows.

    The next time when you are in Windows, the launcher is in fact 'gone', but here's the catch, when you check the task manager a service called 'Avira.ServiceHost.exe' is still running and for some reason that one doesn't get disabled.

    If you check the folder location from the service it does get redirected to the Avira Launcher folder in Windows Explorer.

    So my question to you is, did you also disabled the 'Avira.ServiceHost.exe' service from automatic startup?
     
    Last edited: Jul 28, 2016
  14. Telos

    Telos Registered Member

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    Not exactly the "normal" icon in the systray area...

    For example, when I right click the tray icon, after disabling the launcher, I can no longer disable/enable real-time protection or web protection from the systray icon. For those, I must start "Pro". However, disable/enable Windows Firewall is still present.
     
  15. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Yes.
     
  16. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Correct.
     
  17. The Hammer

    The Hammer Registered Member

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    Not wild about the launcher but I'll tolerate it for now.
     
  18. guest

    guest Guest

    @roger_m
    Yes, you get a popup but you can not change anything it's just a notification and the elements are automatically quarantine, you can not select that the detection is a FP and add it to a whitelist, I think this is really annoying as well.

    The good news is that if you send the FP to the lab via right click, in less than 12hrs usually you get an answer and then you can recover the file from quarantine.

    Restore a file from quarantine is useless because avira detects it again add it to quarantine, they need a whitelist system.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jul 28, 2016
  19. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    Thanks. I missed that option.
     
  20. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    In that case I'll give Avira a miss for now, as I like to be able to choose what happens when a threat is detected. Also, it's a shame that files are not whitelisted when restored from quarantine.

    On one hand, it's good that they are quick to rectify false positives. On the other hand if a PUP is detected, I would want an easy way to whitelist it so that it is not detected again.
     
  21. bollity

    bollity Registered Member

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    As long as launcher can be disabled I will keep avira. If Avira wouldn't work without enabling it then I will convert to AVG, Avast or Qihoo 360.
     
  22. hamlet

    hamlet Registered Member

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    I find the launcher to be a very small annoyance and will keep Avira Pro even if it cannot be disabled. Having to occasionally see the launcher doesn't bother me enough to give up on Avira's powerful protection and light footprint.
     
  23. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Roger I'd like to add a few things to what has already been mentioned. I have Avira Pro on 2 machines, a fast i7 CPU and a core 2 CPU like yours, and even though the difference in processor power, performance is not affected even with the core 2 CPU (I've tried several times running both machines with and without Avira).

    Having a scan or several scans simultaneously is bound to slow down the machine temporarily, however in the Avira configuration scanner window you can set the scanner priority to low/medium/high. As for the white list, I'm not really sure but file objects can be omitted by the Real-Time Protection in 'Exceptions'.

    Of course Avira might be just right for my computers but may affect the performance of other machines...
     
  24. Hiltihome

    Hiltihome Registered Member

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    Believe it or not, but Avira-Pro is the best AV, to detect malicious mail attachments, when you live in Germany.
    I get them every day, and sometimes I load them up to VT and scan with ZAM.
    Avira-pro is always the first to detect them. Amen.

    About the launcher:
    I just disabled it in taskmanager, and feel no need to disable more, because it does not slow down my computer.

    About auto-quarantaine:
    Maybe this is new, in build 18, but I didn't notice this before, I always had the choice, what to do.
     
  25. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    If only a single scan was running, then the impact would have been much less, but I have no idea why Avira runs multiple scans at once. I've never seen any other antivirus do that.

    I know there is the option to manually add exceptions, but I prefer if an antivirus prompts before quarantining a threat and gives me the option to whiltelist the file right there.
     
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