a peaceful feeling (?)

[solon5]

I'm using Avast 4.8 Home Ed. on an old Dell 8100 PC running under Win-ME and w/ the ZoneAlarm firewall installed/active.  Except for some virus flags/alerts shortly after installing AV48HE some time ago, I've not had any viruses detected by scanning or otherwise; quite a while with no "danger" alerts.  Maybe that's a good thing, but... maybe not.  How can I be sure my AV48HE is actually active/working and detecting/blocking viruses?  There's no listings in any of the program's logs (Emergency, Warnings, etc.) and it's quite unusual to have no apparent virus infections on my computer (even tho, yes, it's not a hacker's preferred target).  Any advice/counsel from you Avast veterans about this?

[CharleyO]

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Welcome to the forums, solon5   

On each shield of 4.8 there should be text at the bottom telling how many files & etc have been scanned and what the last one scanned was named. There should also be a date if I remember correctly.


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[YoKenny]

Sadly avast! V4.8 Home Ed will no longer be updated on Win-ME

Microsoft dropped support of Win-ME when XP came out.

Plus avast! V5 has been available for almost a year.

The only reliable anti virus solution of Win-ME is ClamWin but it does not provide resident protection. 

[Gopher John]

Avast 5 will not run on Win-ME.  The definitions should update as long as Avast continues to support Avast 4.  This support will probably end sometime in 2011.

If your hardware is still in good shape, I'd isolate the Win-ME computer from the internet and allow the kids(if available) use it for their games that still run on the relic OS.  Or, install a light version of Linux on it and use it yourself.

[solon5]

***

Welcome to the forums, solon5   

On each shield of 4.8 there should be text at the bottom telling how many files & etc have been scanned and what the last one scanned was named. There should also be a date if I remember correctly.


***

Thanks, CharleyO.  Yes, when I run scans I get <some> feedback (total #/size of files scanned, and the date of the scan, but not the name of the last file scanned) -- but that's all.  No alerts/warnings, ever!  I guess this means my ol' machine just isn't all that interesting to hackers and, so far, I've managed to avoid "drive-by" malware (or so it seems).

[solon5]

Sadly avast! V4.8 Home Ed will no longer be updated on Win-ME

Microsoft dropped support of Win-ME when XP came out.

Plus avast! V5 has been available for almost a year.

The only reliable anti virus solution of Win-ME is ClamWin but it does not provide resident protection. 

YoKenny, yeah, Win-ME was the only OS Bill Gates ever publicly apologized for (but that was before Vista hit the market).  My license/registration for AV48HE expired yesterday but I'm gonna try to get a renewal; sad to hear, tho, that 4.8 will no longer be updated by Avast.  Guess I'll have to try to find/use "ClamWin" since I really hate to part with this well-worn (but still working) 'puter.   

[kb-r]

Definitions updates are available still for Avira Antivir v.8 and v.9 (and, possibly even earlier versions); they also continue to receive updates to their scanning engines.

kb-r