How to disable the ad popup in AntiVir

AntiVir is probably the best free antivirus software. It´s free for non commercial use and updates its virus definitions regulary just like the professional version. The free version however has the habit to display a advertisment popup after each update, which normally means that you see this ad every single day. It is always the same ad and I don´t see a reason for this at all, once is fine but everyday ?

I show you how to disable this advertisment without tampering with the rest of AntiVir. This workaround is only working in windows xp (pro). Run “secpol.msc” which opens the local security settings. Select software restrictions policy on the left and there additional rules. Right click in the window on the right and chose new path rule. Click on browse and navigate to avnotify.exe. (normally in program files/ AntiVir Personaledition Classic/).

Select disallowed as the security level and hit ok to close the dialog. What we´ve done know is that we forbid the execution of avnotifiy.exe which shows the Ads. This works as long as the producer is not updating avnotify.exe itself and changing its name in the process. If that is the case repeat the steps to disallow the new named exe as well.

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Tags: antivir, antivir tips, antivirus, Windows
Categories: Security

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16 Responses to “How to disable the ad popup in AntiVir”

1. gnome says:

   July 16, 2006 at 2:08 pm

   Nice one!

   Reply
2. thunder7 says:

   July 16, 2006 at 5:24 pm

   Another thing I dislike besides spam, popups.
   I am glad you found how to disable that pop up.
   I use avast myself.

   Reply
3. chris says:

   July 16, 2006 at 5:41 pm

   i just infected with a “trust cleaner”. lets see if it can take it off.

   Reply
4. Devdatta says:

   July 17, 2006 at 9:20 pm

   One more thing abt AntiVir : You can end all process except AVGuard in background. You don’t need the icon in system tray to stay protected nor the update service .. you can do it manually. As a result of all this AntiVir has the smallest memory footprint.
   P.S Use MSConfig

   Reply
5. Liam K. says:

   February 20, 2008 at 11:03 pm

   Didn’t work for me. Do I need to set it on avnotifiy.dll, too?

   Reply
6. Ralf says:

   April 11, 2008 at 5:14 pm

   Perfect it works! Thanks a lot.

   Reply
7. Alicson says:

   April 17, 2008 at 12:57 am

   Thanks Martin! Much appreciated. The popup notifications were starting to slowly drive me mad…

   Now if I can just find a way to destroy the most horrendous and insistent popup dialog of all: “Restart Windows now or later to install updates” … LATER! And stay away!!!!

   …Again, thanks very much for this fix on the Avira popups.

   Reply
8. trlkly says:

   June 11, 2008 at 11:33 am

   If you, like me, are stuck with Windows XP Home, you can still do this mod. (AFIK, Vista users are out of luck, as usual.)

   Just open command prompt in the directory where AntiVir is installed (usually you can type “cd Program FilesAviraAntiVir PersonalEdition Classic” [without the quotes] in Command Prompt).

   Now run the command “cacls avnotify.exe /D <username>” (without the quotes), replacing <username> with the name you use to login to Windows.

   If you are an administrator, repeat the command for any other users on your system.

   Voila! You just did something that both Avira and Microsoft don’t want you to do!

   Reply
9. trlkly says:

   June 12, 2008 at 5:03 am

   Crud. I didn’t notice the lack of backspace!

   Here is the first command I mentioned (in parentheses)

   cd \\Program Files\\Avira\\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic

   Reply
10. trlkly2 says:

    June 12, 2008 at 5:08 am

    YESTERDAY I DIDN’T HAVE TO HAVE MY COMMENTS APPROVED. WTF IS UP?

    Yes, trlkly=trlkly2
    I’d prefer the second one be posted, or my original fixed.

    Reply
11. vadim says:

    November 12, 2008 at 2:24 am

    Thanks for the tip! isn’t it amazing that software that is supposed to protect from unsolicited annoying behavior such as virus, is exercising exactly this behavior itself. Would be interesting to ask creators of Antivir what’s the rationale behind their product not detecting itself.

    Reply
12. Gabriele says:

    May 6, 2009 at 1:16 pm

    @Alicson,

    How to postpone the nag screen about restarting after updates (you cannot completely disable it .. but you can make it popup every 24 hours instead of every few minutes..)

    http://thebackroomtech.com/2007/10/12/how-to-delay-the-windows-automatic-updates-reboot-nag-screen-and-the-automatic-reboot-after-applying-updates/

    Reply
13. Anonymous says:

    October 26, 2009 at 2:22 am

    thank u

    Reply
14. NeoApocalypse says:

    November 10, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    I can confirm that this brilliant fix also works on Windows 7 (Ultimate 64bit)

    Love it! Thanks

    Reply

Trackbacks/Pingbacks

1. How to: remove the popups in Avira AntiVir Personal/Free. | Tips 'n Tricks | dotTech [.org] says:

   March 23, 2009 at 4:04 am

   [...] Liam K. He is also the original author of the article at wikiHow. Liam’s original sources include gHacks and EliteKiller. Thanks [...]

   Reply
2. ProjectR » How to Remove the Popup Ads in Avira Antivir says:

   April 4, 2009 at 7:51 am

   [...] http://www.ghacks.net/2006/07/16/how-to-disable-the-ad-popup-in-antivir/ [...]

   Reply