Author Topic: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **  (Read 189892 times)

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Hawk

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #285 on: July 02, 2011, 12:53:11 AM »
Yeah, finally i can use AIS now after a very long time.
No more problems with the firewall,utorrent and DPC latency (bsods etc).
Thanks for fixing.

Offline DavidR

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #286 on: July 02, 2011, 01:00:08 AM »
OK, a bit more in detail then.

First, I don't understand why a credit alert feature doesn't sound good on a machine with sensitive banking data - when it has absolutely nothing to do with them... no idea.

Second, there has to be a checking whether the feature is installed - if there wasn't, it wouldn't be possible to install that feature, it simply wouldn't exist.

Third, the feature is tiny - it does nearly nothing locally (I mean even if registered/activated). If registered, it only connects to our server occasionally and downloads a status update (without sending any data out there); if the status says there was a change, a popup is shown. Basically all the code is already there in avast! for other purposes (contacting our servers, showing popups, rendering HTML code) - so the feature reuses that code and grows the whole program only an insignificant bit.
The feature is so tiny that making it separable, which means adding some code into avast! setup that would make it possible to add/remove that feature, and making it connectible into the program once installed - could actually make the program bigger (without that feature installed) than it is now, with that feature installed. So... I kinda don't see the point in separating it.

I'm playing devils advocate here, as we all know there are many people who will see this and become suspicious of its purpose/intent, just as it has here when the CreditAlert was first mentioned. There are also people that actually do go digging around in the logs and seeing this new creditmonitor.log file is likely to have the same effect.

I don't believe it has anything to do with physical size, but about how people perceive it, what we/I have been banging on about.
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Kid Shamrock

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #287 on: July 02, 2011, 03:36:33 AM »
Can we have a break from all the talk about the credit reporting feature? This thread is supposed to be about actual problems with the beta, not about the ethics or desirability of a feature or function of the program. Legitimate problem reports are being drowned out by all this useless debate. Please take it to another thread or to PM, as I for one am tired of hearing it!!  >:(

Nesivos

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #288 on: July 02, 2011, 06:46:03 AM »
I suggest you test compatibility with Raxco PerfectDisk 12 Professional on Windows XP SP3 32bit.
For as long as i had this AIS beta installed, my netbook was grinding HDD badly on startup, everything took ages to open, PerfectDisk couldn't perform boot defrag. After i've removed avast!, everything was working again. I'm donwloading AIS beta again to doublecheck.

EDIT:
Not sure which avast! component exactly is causing it but yeah, i can confirm it's reproducable.
Installed it 3 times and each time after installation, awful HDD grinding and really bad performance. After i've removed it, everything was fine again. The latest stable version however doesn't seem to exhibit such problems...

I used Perfect Disk for years up through PD11 Home Premium.   I thought PD11 HP was buggy and start-up both W7 x32 and x64 took a long time.  I finally dumped it and replaced it with Smart Defrag. (It is free).  I have been using Smart Defrag for a few months and it does the job for me.  A lot lighter on resources and boots and restarts are faster.  JME :)

Offline RejZoR

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #289 on: July 02, 2011, 07:28:25 AM »
I suggest you test compatibility with Raxco PerfectDisk 12 Professional on Windows XP SP3 32bit.
For as long as i had this AIS beta installed, my netbook was grinding HDD badly on startup, everything took ages to open, PerfectDisk couldn't perform boot defrag. After i've removed avast!, everything was working again. I'm donwloading AIS beta again to doublecheck.

EDIT:
Not sure which avast! component exactly is causing it but yeah, i can confirm it's reproducable.
Installed it 3 times and each time after installation, awful HDD grinding and really bad performance. After i've removed it, everything was fine again. The latest stable version however doesn't seem to exhibit such problems...

I used Perfect Disk for years up through PD11 Home Premium.   I thought PD11 HP was buggy and start-up both W7 x32 and x64 took a long time.  I finally dumped it and replaced it with Smart Defrag. (It is free).  I have been using Smart Defrag for a few months and it does the job for me.  A lot lighter on resources and boots and restarts are faster.  JME :)

Well, that still doesn't change the fact that PerfectDisk 12 Pro was working fine with current stable version but doesn't with this beta which means there is something wrong with this beta.
Plus you can't just expect all the users not involved here to just stop using PerfectDisk because you happen to prefer SmartDefag. I've tried it and it's not bad but some will just prefer PerfectDisk and if they do, it has to work properly with avast!.
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Ashwyn

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #290 on: July 02, 2011, 11:41:14 AM »
thx for the update

jrace

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #291 on: July 02, 2011, 01:27:20 PM »
OK, a bit more in detail then.
.......

My last input for your decision,"igor".

To your "First":
It is just a bad feeling.

To your "Second":
 "....., it simply wouldn't exist". That's exactly the point because it simply does not exist for a non "native US English" machine and it does not need to be checked and verified.

To Your "Third":
I don't care about size of code. Here again I can fully support the statements of "DavidR, Reply #286".

Generally I could not nearly follow your logic.
The installation code of avast! seems intelligent enough to find during installation that my machine is not a "native US English" system. It just decided this feature is not usable/installable for a customer with a "native German" system. So it did not install a button or whatever into the GUI to use if wanted the "CreditAlert" feature.

Why the devil must it install a checking routine that checks on every system start or restart whether it has got that thing installed or not when it decided allready during avast! installation this can not be installed?

You might hide the log entries you might even hide the whole log, but since you are fighting hard to leave that "Credit Alert" code in avast! even for users who by definition are not entitled to use it, the bad feelings are getting worse and worse

How would you feel if you enter a foodstore to bye a steak and everytime at the entrance a "Man in Black" (MIB) will check you whether you are entitled to bye an automatic firearm from him although he decided allready not to sell you one and the MIB argues - no checking - no steak?
I guess you would just lean back and use a different store next time to bye your steak and may be even a bottle of beer.

Sorry "igor" this logic sounds to me like a thing from a different universe.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2011, 01:32:21 PM by jrace »

Offline DavidR

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #292 on: July 02, 2011, 01:37:04 PM »
Can we have a break from all the talk about the credit reporting feature? This thread is supposed to be about actual problems with the beta, not about the ethics or desirability of a feature or function of the program. Legitimate problem reports are being drowned out by all this useless debate. Please take it to another thread or to PM, as I for one am tired of hearing it!!  >:(

Sorry, but it is still a part of the 'legitimate' beta testing, like it or not. As sure as eggs are eggs if it goes out to a regular program update, these forums will start to come alive with topics on this very subject.

We have seen this before in the forums after the release of a new feature on other perhaps as trivial things. And guess who are the ones that will be fending of the questions about it, so it is best to get it cleared up at a beta level before release.

The whole point of the beta testing is that everyone involved in the beta can get feedback in the forums and that can't be achieved shrouded in the darkness of PMs.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2011, 01:38:52 PM by DavidR »
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Offline igor

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #293 on: July 02, 2011, 02:27:30 PM »
That's simple - the  "wouldn't exist" means it wouldn't be possible to have it even for US users. There is only one build of avast!, one installer - and it's not going to change (it would make many things rather complicated, both for the users and for us). Therefore, there has to be, and will be, checks for installed features inside (be it the various shields, language modules, Sandbox, SafeZone, firewall, antispam, webrep, Vista gadget... or anything else). It's the same as checking for the version of the operating system - that's also done on every start (instead of having separate installers for Windows 2000, Windows XP before SP2, Windows XP after SP2, Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit... that would be crazy, and you might have to uninstall and install a "new" product after updating your service pack, for example). Or, checking for the installed programs (Is Outlook installed? Fine, let's use the mail-scanning plugin. Is the filesystem NTFS? OK, let's use the persistent cache. Etc...)

The thing is that the mere considering such a check a problem is kinda ridiculous. The program performs thousands of similar checks on every start, new virus definitions regularly add operations that are orders of magnitude bigger and slower than that... and nobody notices. So this common one-microsecond check can hardly fit the MIB analogy, as you aren't bothered by that, and actually have no way of telling whether such a check has happened.
So this is not "fighting hard to leave the code inside" - it's fighting against doing a completely illogical thing (from the programming point of view) which would take effort to implement, increase the complexity of the code (bringing some more bugs), increase the size of the code - and in the end, the result would actually be exactly the same as it was before, just with one additional checkbox visible somewhere.

As for the "bad feeling"... well, not sure what to say about that. I'd probably just point out that the antivirus already checks files on your disks for malware, redirects and scans your network connections for malicious code, checks your e-mail... which is where the sensitive data really are, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Yet a simple feature which does nothing at all when not registered, and when it is registered it only receives data, doesn't send anything anywhere... is suddenly a problem. I mean, we are trying to protect your data, not to compromise them... but if we (or any other antivirus or security program you might have installed) really turned "to the dark side" and wanted to harvest your private data (or whatever else that this bad feeling might include), it would be rather stupid to add a new suspiciously sounding feature to do that - when all the necessary mechanisms are already there for years.

Anyway, this is not my "decision" (and my work also doesn't include this particular feature), it was just my attempt to explain the technical background (i.e. basically a personal opinion of somebody who knows a bit about avast! internals). However, since it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I suppose that's the last input from me on that topic as well.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2011, 03:03:06 PM by igor »

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #294 on: July 02, 2011, 03:01:23 PM »
igor, can someone test my PerfectDisk 12 issue? I think it's more important than why CreditAlert is good or is not.
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Offline igor

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #295 on: July 02, 2011, 03:04:57 PM »
I asked the QA guys to check.

jrace

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #296 on: July 02, 2011, 03:23:36 PM »
@ "igor" « Reply #293 on: Today at 14:27:30 »:


Thank you for your responsiveness!

I believe this is about the only forum where you get answers if you like them or not. Even for some kind of emotionally coloured questions.

Regards, jrace.
« Last Edit: July 02, 2011, 04:20:49 PM by jrace »

bjgood

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #297 on: July 02, 2011, 06:20:53 PM »
I've been getting BSOD on both beta 1184 and 1198 just at the end of the install process. This is on Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. Build 1125 installs fine.

Anyone else?

Thanks.

Later...

Bob

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #298 on: July 02, 2011, 06:22:28 PM »
I've been getting BSOD on both beta 1184 and 1198 just at the end of the install process. This is on Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit. Build 1125 installs fine.

@bjgood, please send me the latest minidumps (\Windows\Minidump folder) to my email: kurtin@avast.com
thanks

DBone

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Re: ** INTRODUCING: NEW BETA VERSION OF AVAST - NOW 6.0.1198 **
« Reply #299 on: July 02, 2011, 06:33:04 PM »
That's simple - the  "wouldn't exist" means it wouldn't be possible to have it even for US users. There is only one build of avast!, one installer - and it's not going to change (it would make many things rather complicated, both for the users and for us). Therefore, there has to be, and will be, checks for installed features inside (be it the various shields, language modules, Sandbox, SafeZone, firewall, antispam, webrep, Vista gadget... or anything else). It's the same as checking for the version of the operating system - that's also done on every start (instead of having separate installers for Windows 2000, Windows XP before SP2, Windows XP after SP2, Vista 32bit, Vista 64bit... that would be crazy, and you might have to uninstall and install a "new" product after updating your service pack, for example). Or, checking for the installed programs (Is Outlook installed? Fine, let's use the mail-scanning plugin. Is the filesystem NTFS? OK, let's use the persistent cache. Etc...)

The thing is that the mere considering such a check a problem is kinda ridiculous. The program performs thousands of similar checks on every start, new virus definitions regularly add operations that are orders of magnitude bigger and slower than that... and nobody notices. So this common one-microsecond check can hardly fit the MIB analogy, as you aren't bothered by that, and actually have no way of telling whether such a check has happened.
So this is not "fighting hard to leave the code inside" - it's fighting against doing a completely illogical thing (from the programming point of view) which would take effort to implement, increase the complexity of the code (bringing some more bugs), increase the size of the code - and in the end, the result would actually be exactly the same as it was before, just with one additional checkbox visible somewhere.

As for the "bad feeling"... well, not sure what to say about that. I'd probably just point out that the antivirus already checks files on your disks for malware, redirects and scans your network connections for malicious code, checks your e-mail... which is where the sensitive data really are, and nobody seems to have a problem with that. Yet a simple feature which does nothing at all when not registered, and when it is registered it only receives data, doesn't send anything anywhere... is suddenly a problem. I mean, we are trying to protect your data, not to compromise them... but if we (or any other antivirus or security program you might have installed) really turned "to the dark side" and wanted to harvest your private data (or whatever else that this bad feeling might include), it would be rather stupid to add a new suspiciously sounding feature to do that - when all the necessary mechanisms are already there for years.

Anyway, this is not my "decision" (and my work also doesn't include this particular feature), it was just my attempt to explain the technical background (i.e. basically a personal opinion of somebody who knows a bit about avast! internals). However, since it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, I suppose that's the last input from me on that topic as well.


Good stuff igor!