I'm sticking with Avast and here's why...

[superhacker]

forgive me but i will move to.....
the kitchen ,make some tea ,drink it,and laugh on the other security vendors who think we will leave avast
avast is the best now yesterday in the future,at all time.go avast we all with you.

[YoKenny]

Well said, Telstar. I too will stick with Avast! Have had it for years and it has done well for me.

ps..do we have to upgrade to V.5?
Do we have a choice?

V4.8 will be supported through 2010 but that's because there are many Win98/ME users still.

You have a choice and you can make that decision when V5 becomes available in January 2010.

[Omega40]

Well said, Telstar. I too will stick with Avast! Have had it for years and it has done well for me.

ps..do we have to upgrade to V.5?
Do we have a choice?

V4.8 will be supported through 2010 but that's because there are many Win98/ME users still.

You have a choice and you can make that decision when V5 becomes available in January 2010.

Thank you for the info, YK.

[jayweb44]

I'm new here also.  The major panic of yesterday brought me here.  I must say that I have been using Avast for a few years now and I still (after a terrible experience yesterday) will be using Avast.  It has proved itself over and over again as being a great avs!  I do wish that I would have came here first instead of trying to fix my pc on my own, then maybe I wouldn't have lost over 700 files, but that's in the past now.  Time to move on with Avast!

[Telstar]

.

I do wish that I would have came here first instead of trying to fix my pc on my own, then maybe I wouldn't have lost over 700 files, but that's in the past now.  Time to move on with Avast!

To many of us users, as well as the developers of Avast, this recent experience with the false positives has taught us many things about how to react to the unfortunate but highly unlikely possibility of a repeat event sometime in the future.  The Avast developers obviously already knew to act quickly and decisively in formulating a fix when they discovered their error, and as we found out, the update to repair the issue was being distributed within hours of discovery.

For me personally, I know enough now that in the future whenever I receive a string or series of malware alerts such as the ones for Win32:Delf-MZG and Win32:Zbot-MKK to come to these forums first before doing anything rash.

After the second Trojan alert I received I became suspicious enough to Google "Win32:Delf-MZG"...first of all to find out what kind of threat it was but instead immediately saw an overwhelming number of computer users posting at various tech and security sites inquiring about the same thing and this then prompted me to come to these Avast Forums.  It took a while before I could gain entrance due I suppose to the ever-increasing numbers of Avast users also looking for answers but, once here, I found the problem first of all was NOT with me or my computer but with the recent 091203-0 update containing the FP's we had all received.  In a short time I had answers and a solution once the new updated VPS version 091203-1 was issued.

So, lesson learned...don't panic.  Just come to these Forums before over-reacting as many of us did in the beginning and you might find you're in the good company of many other Avast users finding themselves in the same predicament and, as we found out with this recent event, we will work together as we listen to the progress of the developers as they endeavor to find and distribute a solution.

Today, with a sense of relief that this is all behind us, I can now relax and get back to the enjoyment of my computer experience knowing full well that Avast is once again on-guard protecting me from "real" threats out there just looking for the opportunity to invade my system.

Good day everyone!

and as far as I'm concerned, my opinion hasn't changed one iota...

AVAST still rocks!

[Chim]

and as far as I'm concerned, my opinion hasn't changed one iota...

AVAST still rocks!

I concur, Telstar!
Interestingly enough, in MY case, I actually to a certain extent came out ahead after the other night's incident.  The only thing I uninstalled was my IZArc File Zipping / Unzipping Utility as that was tagged as being infected.  I used to have IZArc 3.81.  Out of curiosity, before reinstalling it after the Avast Fix, I checked and found out there is now an IZArc 4.1.  So, I'll be downloading and installing THAT instead of my old IZArc version.

And yeah, I'm sticking with Avast Home Free! 

[tele_mark]

I just ditched AVG after 10 years when it's Version 9 seemed to have lost it's mind and caused my hard drive to thrash endlessly, and there seems to be very little care of the issue on their forum. I had Avast for 2 weeks when this problem hit. It only affected a free registry cleaner program I had, and only in that I put the file in the vault. I'm fairly computer savvy, so I immediately Googled the virus name, and fortunately, the first threads about it here had been cached, so I was in the know pretty quickly.

I will be staying with Avast and probably getting the Pro version soon, due in part to the quick resolution and posting about what happened. I also got a look at how the app actually handles threats, and liked it very much.

[essexboy]

Errors happen and the world is not perfect.  But if Avast started screaming to me about hundreds of files being infected my first thought would be either Virut or Sality (file infectors) or a false positive. I was not affected by the rogue update for some reason mayhap it wasn't my update time who knows.  But the response in my opinion was extremely fast.  Compare it to the AVG userinit problem which I believe took over 24 hours before a resolution was available, if you could start your computer that is.

I do a lot of work on a malware forum cleaning systems and I do not recollect any instances of this being posted during the bad hours.

The bottom line I feel is, that if you get multiple alerts on what appear to be regular/known files then treat with suspicion.  But in all the years I have had Avast this is the first time that I have heard of trouble like this, there may be the odd single false positive but they are exceptionally rare, and with the new system in force become resolved fairly fast   

Here endeth my sermon 

[wonder]

I think avast people are human, and human beings can make mistakes...and then, I remember that even kaspersky had the same problem with a wrong update...but in that case, it killed explorer.exe!!!!  
I remember another case about AVG..and it was worse, since they made this error twice!!
So, i'm still an avast fan..these things can happen, everyone should image his sistem at least once a mounth  

[Telstar]

.
FYI: Friday December 04 @ 10:09 PST (5:09 p.m. GMT)....

Information about current update:
Total time: 5:28

- Vps: Updated
  (previous version: 091203-1, updated version: 091204-0)

Server: download648.avast.com (74.55.28.194)
Downloaded files: 5 (40.50 KB)
Download time: 2 s

So, this is the new update following yesterday's repair update 091203-1.

If you haven't received yours yet, stand by.

 

[Omega40]

Just turned on my computer and already have been updated to 091204-0. 
Thank you Avast! and crew.
<3

[MikeBCda]

One suggestion I would make, and I'm not sure this is the place, would be to have Avast! keep the old database handy when it updates to a new database.  Waiting for the fix was not too much of a problem for me, but it would have been nice to roll back to a slightly out-of-date but properly functioning database rather than to respond to false positives for a few hours waiting for the fix.

Interesting idea, cromag, and certainly I'd second the motion for Alwil to look into the possibility of implementing this.

Even more convenient would be for the update process to save on your own system a backup copy of the full database in its pre-update form, so you wouldn't even have to download anything to "backdate".  Admittedly you'd still have to restore all those quarantined (or worse yet, deleted) "infected" files, but as has been pointed out a number of times, that's why disk-imaging is so highly recommended.  I plead guilty to not using imaging myself - but I do have and use Restore-IT which is extremely similar in concept.