Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: winchholder on January 03, 2014, 11:05:58 PM
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I have been using avast for many years without trouble and have found it very easy to use, lightweight and most importantly non-annoying.
Lately though, it has been testing my patience. Originally it updated to the newest-ish version (8/9 I've lost track), but I do a lot of development work with Visual Studio and it consistently crashed VS's debugger (something do with the "deepscreen" scanner despite me adding the relevant listing to the exclusions list, the replacement of sandbox which worked fine) so I rolled back a version or to (6/7?). I set the settings to
- Program Updates: Manual updates
- Database updates: Automatic updates
so it would update the Virus DB but not the programme. So this was fine for a while, but tonight whilst in the middle of working, suddenly windows DWM and explorer crash, and down go all networking and other things. I can't be sure, but I think it is too much of a coincidence that this happened (never happened before), and then when I reboot suddenly the latest version of avast had installed itself (2014.9.0.2011 something). Whilst going through the settings trying to figure out exactly what version it was, I noticed that it had auto-ticked the "Participate in the avast community box" which had previously been UNticked. In fact, the program updates setting is still set to Manually update :o
I don't understand why avast randomly decided to ignore my setting to not auto-update the program, particularly without telling me and (I think, though I have no proof) utterly screwing up my computer to the extent I had to hit the reset button. For those of us with specific requirements working with the "latest and greatest" is not always practical. I will go back and re-install version 6 or 7, but is this a bug or deliberate behaviour?
Thanks in advance and I apologise if this comes across a bit sharp but it is extremely irritating.
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The explanation was there was a conflict with Windows Updates and earlier versions of Avast, so those users were automatically updated.
Several threads on this topic, and a mea culpa from Avast that users should have received advanced warning.
That said, you can roll back to the previous version 9.0.2008.
Older versions of Avast can be downloaded at Filehorse.com.
http://www.filehorse.com/download-avast-antivirus/old-versions/
I would recommend running the Avast Uninstall Utiltity, just to make sure all bits are off your system.
http://www.avast.com/en-us/uninstall-utility
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Which OS are you running?
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I have previous cases of "manual" updates installing without consent. I have missed those previous threads:
"The explanation was there was a conflict with Windows Updates and earlier versions of Avast, so those users were automatically updated.
Several threads on this topic, and a mea culpa from Avast that users should have received advanced warning."
Does anyone know about those threads, and a URL?
Sincerely,
J.R. "AutoSandbox Guy" Guthrie
"At this point in time, the Internet should be regarded as an Enemy Weapons System!"