I purchased a SanDisk Cruzer with U3 - and installed the Avast! AntiVirus U3 Edition offered by U3 as trial. For those unfamiliar with the concept, take a look at
http://portableapps.com or
http://www.u3.com , but the basic idea is people like me who use lots of different Windows computers each day can "carry" our applications on a USB stick and NOT have to install them. In fact, when in a customer's factory I am neither permitted Internet access nor can I install anything (but oddly enough they let me plug my USB stick in ... little do they know!
)
Unfortunately this version of Avast! U3 is not "compatible" or not "cooperative" with FireFox running from a USB drive :'( ... which is something I'd wager 99.9% of U3 people will be trying to do. Avast! seems to be scanning FireFox's temp files and thus Fire Fox just abandons them. Looking in the FirefoxPortable\Data\profile show a fast growing list of files such as:
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-1.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-2.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,593 bookmarks-3.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-4.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-5.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-6.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-7.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-8.html
11/21/2006 08:39 AM 185,597 bookmarks-9.html
- and
11/21/2006 09:28 AM 5,809 sessionstore-1.js
11/21/2006 09:37 AM 5,323 sessionstore-2.js
11/21/2006 09:38 AM 6,569 sessionstore-3.js
11/21/2006 09:42 AM 14,517 sessionstore-4.js
11/21/2006 09:43 AM 12,970 sessionstore-5.js
I have seen this with the U3 version of FireFox 1.5 and the PortableApps FireFox version 1.5 and 2.0. Literally, I am losing several MB of my USB drive per hour that I run FireFox and Avast! concurrently. Shutting down Avast! U3 stops the creation of these abandoned temp files, but I still need to manually clear them.
I hope someone from Avast! either (or both) checks if there are any changes to the Avast! U3 to avoid this disk-space loss, as well as get involved in the FireFox open-source to help FireFox properly handle whatever situation Avast! U3 is creating. Although I have not looked, I wonder if OpenOffice and other portable apps have similar issues with how Avast! U3 scans temp files. I had planned to buy the Avast! U3 subscription, but clearly that would be foolish unless something changes.
Best Regards
- LynnL, Industrial Specialist, Digi Int'l