current state of the database of avast! free in the main window is updated.

[Nicauserfreeavast]

I have long observed that avast! free antivirus does not show the current state of their definition of virus database when it encounters more than one week out of date so you can see from this screenshot I've taken. Since version 4.8 I have seen this issue.

[CraigB]

Do you not have auotmatic updates turned on?

[DavidR]

Why would it be more than one week out of date ?
If you haven't changed the Auto Update check to manual. Or the system is off-line for more than a week at a time, in which case I would have thought you would do a manual update right away once you connect or avast would check right away when you connect.

Why it isn't showing I don't know, it does on mine if it is even a day out of date if I set it to manual updates. The thing is to do that, it has to check the avast servers for the availability of updates, to do that you have to be on-line.

[Nicauserfreeavast]

I have no Internet service, I update my avast! free downloading updates through the package vps provided from the avast! servers, I do not know if that has to do with the state that my avast! installation shows me. what do you think?

[DavidR]

I don't know for sure, but my best guess is that avast checks for available updates to see if it is out of date and if you haven't got internet connection it can't make that comparison.

However, the windows security center doesn't require any connection as it looks a the date of the current definitions against the system date and if that is greater than 7 days it will pop-up the Security Center shied notification and change that display in the windows security center.

So it may be that 4.8 employed the same process of just checking the VPS version against the system date.