avast! Free - Recommended Sensitivity and Actions Settings

[Corsair]

Hi all,

I just spent a while searching the forums and couldn't really find the answer I was looking for. Maybe I didn't look in the right place and if I am going over old territory I apologise.

I use avast! Free and was wondering what people have set their "Sensitivity" and "Actions" settings to for each of the Real-Time Shields?

At the moment I have mine set up as follows for each of the Real-Time Shields.

Sensitivity Settings:

Heuristics: High, Use Code Emulation: Ticked

Test Whole Files: Unticked

Scan for PUPs: Ticked

Actions:

For Virus I have the following order: Repair, Move To Chest, Delete

For PUP & Suspicious I the following order: Ask, Repart, Move To Chest

Show notifiction window when action is taken: Ticked

If necessary, perform the selected action at system restart: Ticked

I have also selected: Try to remove only the packed file from the archive; if it fails do nothing.


Are these settings people recommended? I only set the heuristics to high after read the av-comparatives report.

[DavidR]

In all honesty you are best to leave the avast settings at their defaults until you get to know the program better. This way you get to know how the program works within your system and provides a benchmark for the future when you are more used to the program, should you then make changes.

The default settings provide the best balance between protection and performance.

[Corsair]

In all honesty you are best to leave the avast settings at their defaults until you get to know the program better. This way you get to know how the program works within your system and provides a benchmark for the future when you are more used to the program, should you then make changes.

The default settings provide the best balance between protection and performance.

Well that's what I initially thought until I read the AV-Comparatives report (http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/detection-test - On-Demand Comparative Feb 2011) which stated:

Avast, Avira, Kaspersky, Symantec: asked to get tested with heuristic set to high/advanced. For this reason, we recommend users to consider also setting the heuristics to high/advanced.

This is what got me wondering about what best course of action would be ...or at least what the general consensus is amongst those experienced users here on the forum ...as to what the best settings would be for those areas I mentioned.

[CraigB]

As DavidR said it is best to leave avast on its default settings since the av is on your computer and not a test lab so you will want a good balance between speed and protection.
In all honesty the only shield that i did change was the sensitivity of the web shield to high, and all the scan setting actions to repair - move to chest - delet.

[DavidR]

<snip>
Well that's what I initially thought until I read the AV-Comparatives report (http://www.av-comparatives.org/en/comparativesreviews/detection-test - On-Demand Comparative Feb 2011) which stated:

Avast, Avira, Kaspersky, Symantec: asked to get tested with heuristic set to high/advanced. For this reason, we recommend users to consider also setting the heuristics to high/advanced.

This is what got me wondering about what best course of action would be ...or at least what the general consensus is amongst those experienced users here on the forum ...as to what the best settings would be for those areas I mentioned.

That is a totally different ball game when most AVs are virtually set to paranoid levels and the test scans are looking for some old, weird and stuff that in reality don't present much of a problem in a resident anti-virus.

These tests are on-demand scans and not on-access scans when a different set of rules apply, PUPs are included in this and that wouldn't normally be looked at on the default on-demand scans.

So you were asking about resident shield settings in relation to on-demand scan tests.

With a resident on-access antivirus like avast, the need for frequent on-demand scans is much depreciated. For the most part the on-demand scan is going to be scanning files that would be otherwise be dormant or inert. If they were active files then the on-access file system shield would be scanning them before being created, modified, opened or executed.

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For me I also have the Web Shield set to High.

I have the decisions for all detections set to Ask, followed by No Action, but I'm a bit of a control freak and want to retain full control.

[Gargamel360]

If you feel the need to alter any settings, once you have gotten an idea how the defaults feel/act on your system, another good thing to do is only change them one at a time. 

None of the settings you changed where particularly volatile ones, though.  You left scan all files alone, didn't play with the packer settings.  Scanning for PUPs is fine as long as you understand what a PUP is and how to treat the detection if/when it comes.  Turning heuristics up might generate some strange detection (never happened to me yet), again something you should know what it means and how to deal with it, like PUP. So, you generally have an idea of the ones safest to alter, if you choose.

Like David, all my actions are set to ask, mainly because in a worst case scenario, automated actions can do more harm than good.

[CraigB]

DavidR and Gargamel360 there is no ask in scan computer settings that option is for the real time shield actions which mine is set to the same as the both of you.

[Corsair]

Thanks for all the info. It's made things a little clearer in my head now.

Just a little segue way : Even with avast! Free on default settings - I had to tick the "Load avast! services only after loading other system services" option under troubleshooting. My reason for this was that avast! Free was preventing my notebook connecting to my wireless network for some reason. Anyway - that's fixed it - although I'm not quite sure if that's the right thing to do.

DavidR and Gargamel360 there is no ask in scan computer settings that option is for the real time shield actions which mine is set to the same as the both of you.

That's true. Although there is that "Automatically apply actions during scan..." tick box.

If you untick that does that mean you will get asked for everything ...or does that mean it won't do anything and leave it all till the end?

[DavidR]

DavidR and Gargamel360 there is no ask in scan computer settings that option is for the real time shield actions which mine is set to the same as the both of you.

Corsair, in his original post was asking about the Real Time shields and that is where these are the Action settings he mentioned.

[CraigB]

DavidR and Gargamel360 there is no ask in scan computer settings that option is for the real time shield actions which mine is set to the same as the both of you.

Corsair, in his original post was asking about the Real Time shields and that is where these are the Action settings he mentioned.

So he was, my mistake 

[DavidR]

No problem as the topic also took a diversion into on-demand scans.