What is Avast Emergency Updater and why is it in my scheduled tasks?

[NON]

I have one on my Win7 machine, but not on my Vista machine.

[xSentinel]

As someone that prefers to manually update my software myself ...

Can this feature safely be removed/deleted?

[essexboy]

You need to look in the startup tasks as it is not visible in windows tasks..  Autoruns will show it when run as admin

[hayc59]

duper so sorry

As someone that prefers to manually update my software myself ...

Can this feat
Senure safely be removed/deleted?

Sentinel, hello
maybe kill it or dis-able it using CCleaner??

[igor]

As someone that prefers to manually update my software myself ...

Can this feature safely be removed/deleted?

Yes, you can (though it will probably be recreated on the next program update).
On the other hand, this updater is not meant to be used for ordinary updates - but rather in situations where you wouldn't be able to update manually anyway (without reinstalling).

[hayc59]

As someone that prefers to manually update my software myself ...

Can this feature safely be removed/deleted?

Yes, you can (though it will probably be recreated on the next program update).
On the other hand, this updater is not meant to be used for ordinary updates - but rather in situations where you wouldn't be able to update manually anyway (without reinstalling).

Hello igor
correct but some folks like me and others do not want second hand control
of update software's of any kind

[DavidR]

It isn't a second hand control, but for a specific purpose as Igor said.

Given that, since this is a Scheduled Task 'startup item' scheduled tasks can also be deleted and as some have mentioned it isn't even listed (not in my win7 32bit starter edition) as a scheduled task.

[Asyn]

There are also other ways to block it, but I couldn't find a reason to do so, as it's not doing much, atm.

[Dch48]

You need to look in the startup tasks as it is not visible in windows tasks..  Autoruns will show it when run as admin

Confirmed, if you run autoruns normally in Win 7, the task does not show, but if you run it as an admin, it does. It is also showing in the Win 7 Task Scheduler for me but not in CCleaner.

[igor]

correct but some folks like me and others do not want second hand control
of update software's of any kind

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by second hand control (and whatever it is, I find it a bit absurd personally - because you are (probably?) installing virus definition updates automatically - which can change more than this emergency updater was meant to). The emergency updater is meant only for (hypothetical) cases when something (a bad program update, a bad virus definition update) breaks avast! in such a way that its unable to update anymore in the usual way. So, instead of releasing some fix on the web and telling the users to download and run it manually (which might be hard for many users) - this would be the way to deliver it automatically. So the "emergency update" is something like "emergency repair if something went really wrong".
Of course, we hope it's never gonna be used - it's there "just in case".

But as I said, you are free to remove the scheduled task, it won't affect avast's functionality in any way under normal circumstances.

[Dch48]

The Emergency Updater can also be run manually by double clicking the .exe in the Avast folder.

[Lisandro]

The Emergency Updater can also be run manually by double clicking the .exe in the Avast folder.

Exactly... No parameters. Easy.
But, what about putting a link in the Start Menu folder of avast?

[igor]

If there's a link in the start menu, people will ask about it, there probably should be some explanation in the help file... it's not really worth the effort for something that hopefully won't be needed.

[Lisandro]

Ok. What is it different in the normal update process and the emergency one? I mean, the technical routines.

[Asyn]

...there probably should be some explanation in the help file... it's not really worth the effort for something that hopefully won't be needed.

Well, a short paragraph/explanation won't hurt, imo.