Avast 5 Released...

[Poppa_Meth]

...and it has some major issues.

It seems to be optimized for Win7. Looks good and works well with some nice innovations. Win7 issues get fixed quickly. Vista and XP (especially XP) are not so fortunate.

Many people are reporting Blue Screen crashes frequently with Avast 5, mostly on XP systems. I'm one of them. After an upgrade install it immediately crashes when the desktop loads. Safe Mode>Uninstall>Reboot and it's fine. Run the Avast Cleanup tool and reinstall V5 fresh. Blue Screens when desktop loads. Avast is suspecting something to do with a PowerDVD files, but there are reports from people that have never had PowerDVD having the same issues.

I'm back to 4.8 which still works just fine. I'd recommend you download a copy of 4.8 and the Avast cleanup tool before attempting to upgrade to 5, or better yet, just don't upgrade to 5. Wait until a new build is out that hopefully fixes these issues. After the recent bad definition update that started deleting system files, this comes as very unwelcome news. I'm loosing faith in Avast. Hopefully this will be resolved quickly. It's seems a bit silly to optimized it primarily for Win7 when Vista is bound to be around for a good while yet and even XP will be here for the long haul. XP is still the most widely used OS today.

These problems exist as of build 5.0.377. Wait until the next build is out and check their forums for success reports before trying it.

[johns0]

I tried avast 5.0 and i dont like it,cant disable it from running all the time and use it as an on demand scanner.

[freebird73717]

Thanks for the info!

[freebird73717]

Okay I decided to test 5.0.377. So far no problems. Win XP Pro SP3. I did a full uninstall using the free revo uninstaller. Uninstalled 4.8 with revo, used revo to clean registry, then rebooted. Then installed 5.0.377. Install went fine. No problems so far. I like the new interface. Slick looking. Should be easier for new people to run an on demand scanner as the user interface is easy to understand. I can't see a difference in the resources it uses. Looks about the same to me. I'm going to let it run a few days then report back anything unusual.

From what I read at the avast forums is that those who had trouble were those who did an upgrade from within the program. I chose to do a full uninstall of 4.8 then rebooted and installed 5.0.377. I don't have powerdvd so I can't comment as to conflicts there or not.

[HotDamn!]

It's running fine for me. I would have to say that it may be do to upgrading straight out of 4.8.. I uninstalled that before I upgraded to 5 and I like it.

Seems to be running a little more strong on my memory unlike the other version but that doesn't surprise me.

Thanks for the info. Anyone else getting a little more of a load on memory? or just me..hope not

[Poppa_Meth]

You have to read well into the posts to find all the issues with people who have done a clean install after using Avast's removal tool and cleaning up the registry but still getting the same issues. Test Build 5.0.394 is out as of last night. This has supposedly fixed a good many of the issues. I'm waiting for the final build to release and I'll try it again.

[freebird73717]

Yeah I read a bunch of those posts and saw quite a few that did do a clean install and still had problems. Maybe I'm just lucky. So far I've gotten no problems. I'm still not recommending it over 4.8 to anyone just yet though. Just testing it out for myself.

So far I've noticed no differences in memory usage. Seems about the same for me as 4.8.

[Poppa_Meth]

Yep so far 4.8 seems to have better detection and fully operational components. 5.0 is still having issues with getting all of it's components fully functional. Until they work out the problems 4.8 may still be better security.

[HotDamn!]

Hmmm, no others with more memory usage.. I'll have to look a little more into mine. Maybe I'll reinstall or I may have missed some usage in 4.8 It's not much at all though, computer runs smooth and boots up just as fast.

I do like that when I was browsing the web and it gave me a little beeping sound and message saying that it stopped a Trojan virus from being downloaded. It cut the connection from the page right away. Thats what happens when you browse for free downloads I guess.

For the first few days of having it I noticed when I would shut down a page of Avast would pop up really fast and then it would start to shut down. It's stopped doing that now but I wasn't really sure on why that was happening. Also sometimes when I boot it will take just a bit for it to show that its protecting my computer in the icon tray.. Maybe it's just updating or doing the boot scan or whatever.

Anyways, thanks for putting down all this info. I'm going to go update the system now since you say there's an update, thanks

[Poppa_Meth]

Final Build 5.0.396 is out now. It seems to fix most of the major issues though some people are still reporting some freezing and minor issues. BSOD issues seems to have been worked out. It still doesn't play nice with Malwarebytes active shields though.

[freebird73717]

Still working smooth here. I don't have malwarebytes pro but I do have sas pro running active and have no conflicts.

Thanks for keeping up on this.

edit
I did an in program update from .377 to .396 with no problems.

[Poppa_Meth]

Yes SAS active shields have never seemed to conflict with it. Only MBAM for some reason.