No Notify Avira has been designed by the developer to provide inexperienced computer users with an option to disable the Avira Antivir popup ad effectively. The program supports AntiVir Free 8, AntiVir Free 9 and the latest Antivir 10.

The program displays a command line prompt giving the user the choice to remove the advertising in Avira Antivir 8, 9 or 10 which can be selected by pressing the keys 1 to 3 on the computer keyboard.

No Notify Avira will then make changes to the Windows Registry to disable the advertisement in the selected Anvira Antivir application.

The software program is fully portable and compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Some operating systems might require to run the program as administrators to make the changes to the Registry.

The latest version of Avira Antivir identifies the program as a virus which is a false positive. Cautious users can check the software at Virus Total.

No Notify Avira is available at the developer’s website. (via Webtrickz)

Avira made an announcement a few days ago where they addressed that problem somewhat. They mention that they have realized that “users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal had issues fetching the Updates in time recently”. This is not exactly the same issue but it could very well be related.

Avira therefor decided to implement the following two changes: Change the virus definition file format and use a content distribution network.

First, we switch from our current virus definition files (called iVDF) to a new format called nVDF. iVDF consists of 4 VDF files, while nVDF uses at least 32 files – we need to transfer less data for updating our virus definitions effectively in the future.

This means that we need to deliver about 25 MByte to every Avira installation starting today for switching to the new update system. This might lead to some delays for some users, especially for the users of our free version Avira AntiVir Personal. Just to get an idea about what we’re talking here: More than 100.000.000 Users are trying to get the update more or less on the same day. That is more than 2.5 Petabytes (or 2,500 Terabytes) of traffic.

The previous format used four files that contained all the virus definitions of the program. The new format splits those virus definitions in at least eight times that number so that it will take less data transfers to update the virus definition files (it theoretically could slow down as well if a majority of the files need to be updated as this would mean that more files need to be transferred than in the old update system, but that’s just speculation as there are no technical information available about the process at this point).

To ease the bandwidth bottleneck, we decided to additionally use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). We were first testing a CDN built up by our current Internet service provider. Shortly after activating the CDN, the redirectors – which redirect the update requests to servers close to the users location – were overloaded and couldn’t answer the requests anymore. The situation was solved a little later on, but the CDN isn’t big enough yet to spread this huge update in time. So we decided to switch to a global player in the CDN market to deliver the update.

The second change is the use of a content delivery network. Avira is building up their own CDN but had to contract a global CDN company to spread the massive update to all Avira users. It is likely that they intend to switch to their own CDN at a later time.

It does sound like a good plan though although the massive data transfer to bring the update to all Avira users could prove to be quite a challenge. Did anyone already receive the update?

So called anti virus removal tools have been created to effectively remove traces of anti virus software from the computer system. They usually run a series of processes that delete files, Registry settings and other parameters or options that have been installed by the antivirus software during installation.

Below is a collection of anti virus software removal tools that have been created by the developers of the programs to aid their users if they encounter difficulties uninstalling it.

• AntiVir Registry Cleaner
• Avast Removal Tool
• AVG Remover
• Bitdefender Uninstallation Tool
• F-Secure Uninstallation Tool
• Kaspersky Removal Tool
• McAfee Consumer Products Removal
• Microsoft One Care Uninstall Cleanup Tool
• Norton Removal Tool
• Panda Anti Virus 2008 Uninstaller
• Symantec Corporate Products Clean Up Tool

Did we miss antivirus software uninstallation tools in the list? Let us know in the comments.

It should not be a problem to use the license code in Antivir Premium versions that use a different language. It did work the last time I tried it. The online registration form asks for name, email and country. The information send to the email address is also directly available at the website after registration.

Basically an account at the Avira website is created with a six month license for Antivir Premium. The download link for the premium version and the required HBEDV.KEY is directly available in that account center. If you already have Antivir installed uninstall it before making the installation of Antivir Premium.

The Premium version will ask for the HBEDV.KEY file during installation. Just select it from your hard drive and everything should install just fine and without problems.

The Avira AntiVir Rescue System gives the user three options on how to handle the situation. It can try to repair a damaged system, rescue data and scan the system for virus infections. The Rescue System file can be burned to a CD by double-clicking the downloaded file.

The Rescue System CD does come in handy as well when a computer needs to be checked for viruses before it boots into the operating system. The virus definition files can be updated after booting from the CD. So, this is not your usual Recovery CD that comes with all sorts of tools but one for a very special purpose only. Still nice to have at hand in case the computer gets infected.

The software displays a popup after each update that asks the user to consider upgrading to the premium version of Antivir. If it would popup from time to time fine but this thing is popping up after every update and the updates are scheduled daily.

But before I’m telling you how to disable the advertisement popup i explain how to hide the update and scan windows so that they run silently in the background. Open Antivir and click on the Scheduler tab in the program interface. You see a list of scheduled jobs, by default two jobs are present. One is the daily update and the other a full system scan. Take note of the display mode which is maximized for the system scan and minimized for the update.

Right-click one job and select Edit Job from the menu. Click Next a couple of times until you reach the Display Mode setting. Click on the pulldown menu and select Invisible. Repeat the process for the other job as well.

The popups cannot be deactivated in the software. They are connected to the file avnotify.exe in the Antivir directory. You cannot delete that file because it is downloaded with each update. A working solution is to set a new security rule to disallow the execution of this file.

Right-click the file avnotify.exe and select Properties from the menu. Click on the security tab and mark your user account. Now check Deny on Read & Execute which should disable the popups. I actually have not tested it that way but it should work fine. I did use secpol.msc instead which is unfortunately only available in Windows XP Pro, hence the other method that should work on all versions.

The premium version of AntiVir sells for €19.95 (that’s Euro) usually and adds protection against spyware, adware. pop3 email protection and fast updates through premium servers in comparison to the free version. Both versions protect against viruses, dialers, phishing, worms, trojans and rootkits.

Make sure you fill out the form above and download the Personal Edition Premium from the Avira servers.

I was a bit puzzled because I never heard about something like that before. After searching for several minutes I found a solution. The antivirus application Antivir is apparently causing the problem and there are several fixes for this issue. The first fix is to download a patch from Microsoft
which apparently fixes the issue.

A second solution would be to download a fix provided by the developers of Antivir which switches the filters in Antivir to avoid the problem that urls are removed in Internet Explorer in the future. I hope I was able to help other users who have the same problems and don’t know what is causing it.

GRISOFT is announcing a new version of the AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. This new 7.5 version with improved performance and full compatibility with the latest Windows Vista version is available. Users that are using AVG Free 7.1 will be provided with a specific dialog, within the next few weeks, with the opportunity to choose the right option fulfilling their needs. AVG Free 7.1 version will be discontinued on 15th of Jan 2007. 

In case that you are still looking for an antivirus solution other than AVG Free I recommend Antivir which is completely free for personal use. I have been using Antivir for some time now and have not encountered serious issues as of now. I would say that a successful solution depends more on the user behind the keys than on the antivirus program that he is using.

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.