updates to other PC's

[Neilh57]

I have 3 PC's on a network at home. Getting the kids to update anything is nearly impossible. Is there any way I can update my PC and schedule theirs to update from mine? Any help will be much appreciated. Great piece of kit by the way. Thanks

[Vlk]

Kids' machines don't have access to the Internet?

[Neilh57]

My kids do. They are 16 & 18 years old. am I forgiven?

[Vlk]

So what's the problem, exactly? You want to save some bandwidth by downloading the updates only once for all three machines?

The avast auto-updater on kids' machines should take care of smooth updates, if you have no problem with the fact that the updates will not be mirrored on your machine (which has its own cons, e.g. your computer would have to be always-on for this to work..)

[Neilh57]

This is not so much a problem, rather it would be nice to be able to update all networked M/c's at the same time. Perhaps another option in Update (Basic) where you could set update: From Internet or From Local (ie a mapped drive etc). Also it would be nice to be able to set an update interval.

Any how, is there a way to update other pc's from mine, perhaps by copying the latest updates from mine to theirs? If so, which files?

[Lazaro]

Thats something i´d like to propose. Why not offer the updates to dowload apart and then integrate with the program.

Example: My sister has not conection to internet, but has a lot of traffic of diskettes. So I´d like to have her Avast always as much updated as possible. And actually i can do it only recording always on a CD the hole program, and that is not very functional, so i´d like to be able of download only the update file and in a simple diskette give her to let the program update.

Hope i have said correctly and hope you can undertand what i want to say...

[igor]

Thats something i´d like to propose. Why not offer the updates to dowload apart and then integrate with the program.

If you mean the updates of the virus database, then you can download the vpsupd.exe file from our web - it contains the latest virus database and will update the avast! installation.
If you mean the program itself, then you really have to use the whole setup.exe to perform the update - there is no other possibility (and I dare say there never will be).

[Lisandro]

But if the user copy the *.vpu files from the setup folder under the avast! installation, won't the avast! be updated too?
Oh, at least, that was a suggestion from Pavel in the past (maybe earlier versions 4.0). I don't know if it still works.. The user must shutdown the providers (stop and exit avast). Am I wrong Igor?  

[igor]

I really don't know... I am not sure if the installer wouldn't be a little confused about it, but it may work.
However, if we were talking about the size to transfer, then it wouldn't matter - the total size of the VPU files will be about the same as the SFX installer.

[kubecj]

Igor is right, there is no point of copying the setup directory, because it's of the same length (or even longer) than SFX file itself.

So for offline computers:
vpsupd.exe - vps database update (cca 1MB)
setupXXXX.exe - program update (cca 8MB)

Althought it's true that program update from internet doesn't download 8MBs for each update, it's not possible to do something like that for offline computer. Online updater knows the actual state of the program, hence it can download only differential packages. Offline doesn't, so it must use the 'full' packages.

[Lisandro]

Igor is right, there is no point of copying the setup directory, because it's of the same length (or even longer) than SFX file itself.

So for offline computers:
vpsupd.exe - vps database update (cca 1MB)
setupXXXX.exe - program update (cca 8MB)

Althought it's true that program update from internet doesn't download 8MBs for each update, it's not possible to do something like that for offline computer. Online updater knows the actual state of the program, hence it can download only differential packages. Offline doesn't, so it must use the 'full' packages.

Kubecj, you know, there were a lot of times that the standalone setupXXXX.exe file do not work: error in configuration, change of version (or build), languages... The user of a off-computer knows: the majority of the times you will have to uninstall everything and install the new setup. I have to do it myself a lot of times, redo the configuration and so on...

For a off-computer, maybe the simple copy of the *.vpu files could work.

[kubecj]

Kubecj, you know, there were a lot of times that the standalone setupXXXX.exe file do not work: error in configuration, change of version (or build), languages... The user of a off-computer knows: the majority of the times you will have to uninstall everything and install the new setup. I have to do it myself a lot of times, redo the configuration and so on...

For a off-computer, maybe the simple copy of the *.vpu files could work.

Nope. SFX is nothing than a bunch of *.vpu files with the setup program.

There were few problems with standalone setups, but I still believe that most of your problems were caused by playing with multiple languages at once. I don't know about any serious problems caused by 'normal' english->english updates.

Of course, since most users use faster internet updater, it has a larger userbase and is thus tested very thoroughly by thousands.