You appear to need to learn about virtual machines. They are full OSes and operate ENTIRELY SEPARATE FROM THE HOST COMPUTER except for using the Host's CPU, and internet connection, usually bridged. How you think an antivirus application on the host would protect the guest puzzles me because that cannot happen. The guest machine does not know it is on a host machine. It is a computer unto itself and needs ALL PROTECTION THAT WOULD BE AFFORDED ANY COMPUTER based on the user's habits and whether or not they practice safe hex and use the Proxomitron, etc. I've been using virtual machines for over six years so I am not some dumb newbie that knows nothing about them. Virtual machines are good for testing software and for working with malware because they are SEPARATE MACHINES so the malware, or problems with beta software, affect only the guest not the host.
A fair amount of malware written today refuses to run on a virtual machine, or runs, but doesn't drop its payload...instead runs as normal software that has nothing malicious about it. Malware writers know that many malware fighters download malware to virtual machines rather than physical machines so they have combated this by making their malware virtual machine aware and it will not run on a virtual machine like it will on a physical machine. So, malware fighters test software on a virtual machine and it tests clean. They then tell others it is ok software. Others then download and run it on physical machines and Bam! they get infected. I just ran across some malware like this...written to recognize when it is downloaded to a virtual machine and to behave itself and not drop its malicious payload on a virtual machine. I demonstrated it and ...whew...it is bad that the malware writers are doing this now. Anyhow, virtual machines need antivirus and other security protection assuming you are a user prone to getting viruses. Surely you would not tell me I don't need a firewall on a virtual machine because there is one on my host machine! Geez....
I have 4 VIRTUAL MACHINES AND THEY ALL ARE PROPERLY PROTECTED WITH AV, FIREWALL AND CLASSIC HIPS.
I am not about to put Avast, or any other AV, on my Host computer. I will use Avira version 8 for as long as possible on it. (Ver 10 is junk and 9 is so-so...8 is excellent). I have ProcessGuard on the host computer (full version) so I don't need antivirus but I use it some of the time. I have NEVER been infected in over 12 years of having a computer and have gone long periods with no AV but I have always, since I got XP, had ProcessGuard. I use Online Armor Classic HIPS on this Vista Ultimate virtual machine, along with Avast, but again I don't really need Avast. I have a classic HIPS and that is all that is really needed on any machine (along with the Proxomitron of course. I would not surf the net on any computer where I was not using the Proxomitron).
This Vista virtual machine doesn't need any security protection because it is running on Microsoft VPC 2007 SP1 and I use Undo disks as VPC has no snapshot ability like VMWare Workstation 7, that runs three virtual machines, and VirtualBox that runs 1 virtual machine. So, undo disks is the substitute for lack of snapshot ability and "undo disks" means that when I go to shut down this vista machine, I am asked if I want to save the changes to disk since the last shutdown or if I want to delete them. It is actually a pretty neat feature and, if I encountered a nasty since the last shut down, to get rid of it easily all I have to do is delete all changes to disk since the last shut down when I shut down this time. That puts this machine back to the way it was prior to this boot and shutdown. It is like using Sandboxie. So, I don't need Avast or OA on a virtual machine running on MS VPC 2007. I use them because I like to test software.
Anyhow, finally tonight, when I tried for the fifth time to get Avast to update it did so and THIS time it corrected the GUI and now says it is up to date.
I don't know if it will do an automatic update next time or not but probably it will do automatic update now that it finally fixed itself.
