Your Opinion about Avast !

Who's to say that it means anything anyway? Maybe that's just the normal sound KAV makes from time to time when it's content.....

 

And to think that i used to raise a stink at AVG over their earlier dog ugly prompts, but not to be outdone, that squeel is just as downright ridiculous. UGH

Thanks everyone for all the comparisons up and down but in light or spite of each of those respective advantages vs some of the common limitations customers/users disapprove of, i feel i'm right back at square #1 once again.

I never had a problem with AVAST, just wish they could retool the GUI a bit more rather then the skinning trends they currently seem bent on always supporting. But then, no matter how off-the-wall any of the looks, it still remains that its the accuracy which really counts in the end.

EASTER

 

Skins will be a thing of the past once version 5 is released and there should be a new GUI. Until then you can still run Avast without any of the skins if you choose to do so. Just go to Menu>Settings>Common> uncheck "Enable skins for simple user interface" then close the GUI and reopen.

 

At the risk of going off topic, I have to comment on the 77 incidents of a trojan that I mentioned above. My Daughters computer actually was infected with 77 instances of the Vundo Trojan. Not expecting this as I was installing Avast!, and not being familiar with the app yet, and when Avast suddenly went into a boot scan as I finished the installation, I placed all the trojan infections which happened to be in system32 into quarantine. Now I find out there's a tool to remove the vundo trojan which I will try. It's called Vundofix by Atribune. I see there is also a tool from Symantec, but it's way out of my league. My question is will the tool be able to penetrate Avast's quarantine to remove the vundo, and will system32 be left alone? Thanks for any responses from your experiences.

 

Not sure about this, but I doubt it will be able to move the quarantined items; nor is it remotely necessary for it to do so.
You may also wish to install and scan with MBAM, and/or Superantispyware. These two are very good (bad) for trojans.

 

Actually I have been doing the full scan with SAS numerous times since yesterday. It seems my Grand Daughter accumulated hundreds on instances of malware etc. I believe because she had her history settings in IE tools set for 257mb for the past year. Every time we thought we had them all, a SAS pop up would come up saying there was malware and we needed to do a scan. Now as far as I know she's down to 8 pieces of adware. So, as far as I am aware at this point they have vundo isolated in Avast and possibly SAS quarantines or removed/deleted from the SAS quarantine by my Daughter. You say it's not necessary to remove the quarantined item's, could you elaborate? Do I have to leave these in quarantine for ever? Remember vundo is in a system 32 file or three.

 

Well, to elaborate, what's been put in the chest, stays in the chest, it can't escape or launch itself.
Avast's chest is a little unusual, in that it also keeps copies of clean system files there, from which it is able to do a lot of repair work, should that be necessary. So when you are looking in the chest for bits of the infection, make sure you're looking at the "infected items" section, rather than "all files", or "system files".
Something that is deemed infected that has been quarantined can be deleted, but there is no hurry to do this. With any security software that has a quarantine, it's generally a good operating practice to leave stuff in the quarantine for a week or two, or basically however long it takes you to be sure the item is indeed malware rather than a FP. That's the reason for quarantining rather than deleting. Whenever you're sure it's malware, it can be deleted whenever you want.

If the infection keeps re-creating or re-launching itself, despite repeated scanning/quarantining, it needs further treatment with something different.(such as the latest version of Vundofix, or MBAM, for example.)
I'd recommend deleting any temporary internet files and temporary files - you can use Ccleaner or ATF cleaner for this - then scanning again. If SAS keeps detecting the same thing each scan, you need to do more. (Unless it's a cookie that's being detected. Cookies are created with each website visit, some more so than others, and can be safely deleted/ignored.)
[EDIT] PS, in case it's not clear from the above explanation, you don't touch the "system files" section of the chest. You don't do anything with it. Avast will use the contents as required to restore clean files from it to the system should that be necessary. I believe that when the option that sometimes appears under "malware detected" includes "heal", that's when it uses these.

 

Tarq57, First I want to thank you for taking the time to explain the situation to me. I appreciate it. As you suggested, I had deleted all the temp files and used my Reg Supreme registry cleaner to clean out the crap from her registry the other day. You would be amazed. From what you said, unless I find more vundo I probably have it under control and will do a scan with MBAM as well.

 

I agree, the user interface is ugly Do you know when avast 5 will be available?

 

I have never much cared for the Avast interface look myself, but then again, I'm not sitting around starting at it all day either. I'm more interested in having a good AV that works, and less interested in how pretty it is. I'd welcome a change too, but I think it's a low priority.

 

Thanks all for the help in this topic !

 

Someone in another thread said next year. Now I don't know if that is early 2009 or later in the year.

 

Very poor software. It cant be called "AV".

 

Also, for an antivirus program these days to not be able to do an automatic scan of the hard drive,to me thats another big downfall. It's available for their paid verson,but it's not worth paying for,when many free antivirus programs already offer this feature.

 

I have used Avast myself and had no trouble with it. I install it for relatives & friends that want something that's dependable and easy to use.I wouldn't have any doubts about using Avast again.

 

Boost, I think the reason would be because Avast scanning real-time, say while browsing the web, checking mail, sending a message through messenger programs, and downloading through P2P programs.

I've noticed other free AV programs may require a full scheduled scan, as say for example, some programs/malware could be downloaded onto one's system, and not opened, therefore would not be detected, only detected when run. Therefore, full scan is needed to find problem files.

 

If you want to do something constructive about it, post to the devs on it at the Avast forum and see if you can get them to add/change this.

 

Already been suggested before many times on this very forum and here as well:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=12640.60

 

Ok, good. Nothing else we can do then......

 

Can't have it all, for a free AV, Avast offers way more than other free offers including crippled Avira with no AS module, I would rather that Avast omit the auto scan instead of spyware.

 

This is a non-issue as all you'll need is an antispyware program such as Superantispyware and or Malwarebytes and you have everything covered.

 

Scheduled scans is also a non-issue if you are familiar with Windows own task scheduler:

Scheduled Automatic scans with avast! Free Version

 

Yeah, but who wants to have to install yet another program to do the job when the AV can handle it? Not me anyway...

 

ROFL

As large as modern day hard drives are and your worried about installing a dedicated antispyware program thats specificially designed for this reason,please

 

I understand Kerodo, I also don't like many tools on my harddisk

Maybe the Avast 5 GUI will be good