I have been using Avast for years. I use ZoneAlarm free for firewall. Any other security programs, such as Malwarebytes, are used only for occasional scans and are not running in the background. The computer is shut down at night and started in the morning. Again this AM Avast said it needed a program update, so I clicked Check for update and the never-ending "Checking for application update" is still going. The virus definitions are still updating automatically.