# Avast 5 Released...



## poppameth (Oct 2, 2008)

...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 losing faith in Avast. Hopefully this will be resolved quickly. It's seems a bit silly to optimize 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.


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## poppameth (Oct 2, 2008)

Build 5.0.396 is out. Fixes most issues. There are still some minor freezes and it doesn't play nice with Malwarebytes active shields. Otherwise, much more stable than 5.0.377 was.


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## drpcken (Dec 26, 2009)

I've heard LOTS of good things about Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free too. I may be replacing some of my media pc's with it that currently use AVG.


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## Shamus (Apr 27, 2008)

I recently updated Avast with the pay version and have had issues with my mouse freezing occasionally since then. (Vista)

It hasn't caused me to research and find the correction yet. I'm guessing they will come along with the fix with an auto-update at some point.

I still think Avast is one of the better free options available, short of Linux or a Mac.


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## cellophane (Sep 29, 2009)

drpcken said:


> I've heard LOTS of good things about Microsoft Security Essentials. It's free too. I may be replacing some of my media pc's with it that currently use AVG.


Lifehacker & Gizmodo LOVE MS Security Essentials. I haven't used it but I may try it out at home.

AVG & Clam AV are also good options at a good price (free!)


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## poppameth (Oct 2, 2008)

AVG unfortunately isn't nearly as good as it once was. Now days it's the low end of the free offerings. I tends to be bloated, have way too many false positives, and isn't that great with removing what it does find. 

Avast is my choice because it's more robust in what it can do than Avira or MSE, the two main free competitors. MSE is good for a set and forget build. I use it mainly for relatives and customers that can't be bothered to actually interact with a program on a regular basis. My main gripes with MSE are no email scanning and updates aren't frequent enough. I believe it updates once a day last time I checked. Avira is very good but also lacks email scanning and has a nag scree that pops up on update to coerce you into buying the full version. This can be disabled. I've heard some talk though that the free version of Avira is falling behind in development. 

Avast offers a pretty comprehensive package in it's free version. If you set your email client up correctly you have email scanning. You also have a behavior shield that watches the way programs interact to determine possible malicious activity that may otherwise go unnoticed. It also updates regularly.

As far as freezes and conflicts on upgrading from 4.8 to 5.0, don't upgrade. Completely uninstall 4.8, reboot, use the avast cleanup tool to remove all traces of 4.8, reboot, and do a fresh install of 5.0.


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