Avast v8 Stability Quick Review

[3link9]

(Note: This is My, My Family, and Friends Experiences with Avast's new v8, Please take as a grain of salt and ask other users for their experiences)

Alright, Have using Avast Premier on my Laptop for about a week now and Avast free on my Friends and Family computers that regularly use Avast,
My conclusion is finished and put in the Pros and Cons.

Now, when I went to uninstall Avast Premier, Its uninstaller froze and crashed and would not uninstall, I restarted PC, and even in safe mode, I got the same result. I had to download the removal tool to successfully remove it.

Stability Conclusion (Stable, Risky, UnStable):
UnStable

(Another Note, This is a QUCIK and STABLE review, I'm not reviewing on Avast's detection and prevention and not typing a full review summery, I just want you all to see my experience in a simple quick way. ALSO, Since I consider this as an unstable release I will not rate it a 3 or above stars)

 

[Ink]

Was this a Review for Avast Free, Pro, Suite or Premier?
Or all of the above.

It's unfortunate that you have had a bad experience with such software.

Rushed Release
Very Buggy/Unstable
Frequent Crashing
Blue Screen of Death's
Nonexistent Behavior Shield
Web Shield may slow web browsing
Unstable Sandbox (Frequent crashing)
High CPU usage even on Idle
Failed to Uninstall, Had to use removal tool.

Have you submitted any Bug reports to Avast Forums, although I would understand why you wouldn't.

 

[Littlebits]

It appears that advanced users who like to try many different security setups are the ones who have the most problems with Avast 8. Many are Comodo users.

The most common reason for Frequent Crashing , Blue Screen of Death's, High CPU usage and many other issues is caused by failing to completely uninstall your previous security products.

Since just about everyone who has used Comodo products in the past can bare witness to its sloppy uninstaller. It leaves behind boot drivers which will continue to run and cause problems with other security products after you uninstall it. It takes manual tweaking to remove these left over boot drivers.

Since Comodo has no official removal tool, most users never get it completely removed from their system before trying another product.

So did you make sure that all traces of other security products were completely removed before trying Avast?

Thanks.

 

[3link9]

Was this a Review for Avast Free, Pro, Suite or Premier?
Or all of the above.

Have you submitted any Bug reports to Avast Forums, although I would understand why you wouldn't.

All of the Above but Premier and Free were tested. The only one I did submit was the uninstaller issue which I still haven't got a reply yet, All other bugs I noticed were reported a lot so i didn't bother to waste the time.

So did you make sure that all traces of other security products were completely removed before trying Avast?

Well, On my host system, I do have traces of Comodo on it and all other products I have used I always used a removal tool but from a VM, 2 of my friends as well as a Family Member have computers that only had Avast on them and they have experienced either a crash or a BSOD. Also, My one friend and my family member has new computers that they just recently got so I don't think its a result from an old computer either but the rest have a fairly aged computer and have use security products but they have experienced the same problems. So, I'm guessing its Avast's part on this one especially since I see Avast's tech support forum filled up with the same problems.

 

[Ink]

You can try this method to remove traces of past security software (excludes Windows 8 users).

http://malwaretips.com/Thread-How-to-Remove-Old-Device-Drivers-from-Vista-Windows-7

 

[avastalicious]

It appears that advanced users who like to try many different security setups are the ones who have the most problems with Avast 8. Many are Comodo users.

The most common reason for Frequent Crashing , Blue Screen of Death's, High CPU usage and many other issues is caused by failing to completely uninstall your previous security products.

Didn't biozfear had an endless loop of BSODs with Avast 8 on a freshly formatted laptop?

Had to do a laptop today. Only requirement was some applications + avast! and a legit Office 2007.


I decided to install avast 8 on it after a clean W7 install + all updates + Office 2007.

Did a full scan.
Reboot
Still 18 secs boot up. Upon loading up, BSOD. It was the moment avast! was about to load.

Endless loop of BSOD.

I think you're over exagerating a bit about the remains left after uninstalling a security product. My Windows 8 has been rock stable having installed Bitdefender 2013 products, Avast 8 and Comodo for a while.

The only issue I had with Avast 8 was the green screen thing on youtube but that's a widely known one.

 

[Spirit]

Avast might not be upto the mark but still its not the product which deserve 2 points.

If this was the case than most of av will be near 0 to -5 rating

I think the people except much from big name like Avast and if it slightly behind people expectation they start to bash it

 

[illumination]

It appears that advanced users who like to try many different security setups are the ones who have the most problems with Avast 8. Many are Comodo users.

Im sorry Littlebits, but i have to comment on this, because if it was advanced users, they would know how to uninstall left overs from a security suite.

I know when i use CIS, i have no issues uninstalling and finding what little is left over now days.

As far as Avast having issues, this version is new out of the gates, and bound to have bugs, not to mention that with different systems you will have different results.

 

[3link9]

Avast might not be upto the mark but still its not the product which deserve 2 points.

If this was the case than most of av will be near 0 to -5 rating

I think the people except much from big name like Avast and if it slightly behind people expectation they start to bash it

If you read my notes, The rating is based on its Stability not its full performance on Detected and Preventing Viruses if that was the case, It would probably be a 3 which of course includes its stability rating. However, this is not the case, This is rated on its Quick release and current stability.
So in my Opinion, Its stability is a 2 Star.

See, the reason why I gave it harsh review is because Avast has released a buggy product that should still be in Beta which means everyone that is using Avast (Millions btw) may encounter these bugs and eventually could make damage to a computer. Remember, These are regular users and advanced users we are talking about. Avast should have ran its Beta for months for us Advanced users to help its Quality/Dev team fix these bugs... but most of these bugs have been existent as old as v5.

Remember, I was a former Avast fanboy, It does hurt that they fully released a product in this state.

 

[Spirit]

i agree by your point but I don't feel avast is that much buggy which are stated by few people in their replies.

I have currently installed avast internet security 8 on windows 7 and its not creating any problem other than some slow boot (minor and unnoticeable)

 

[avastalicious]

I know when i use CIS, i have no issues uninstalling and finding what little is left over now days.

I had no issues uninstalling it either. The process went smooth, rebooted, ran a couple of tools to clean the temp files and registry and that's it.

If you guys would tell me what leftovers exist after uninstalling Comodo I'd really apreciate it.

 

[Deleted member 178]

With v5 on Win7, it was mostly the drivers (device manager > show hidden devices > non-plug and play drivers )

 

[avastalicious]

I don't have any Comodo/Any other security vendor drivers in my device manager in Windows 8.
I activated "show hidden devices" and checked the drivers one by one in the list.

I had Comodo v6 installed a couple of weeks ago.

 

[Littlebits]

I can not explain some of the bug reports on Avast forums.
I have upgraded Avast 8 on 6 systems and not one has had any of these issues. I have around 50 customers that also upgraded to Avast 8 and not one of them has reported any problems.

I haven't seen not one crash dump report on Avast forum indicating the cause of the crashes or BSOD.

Then there is the problem that Avast developers can not reproduce these issues in testing.

So basically all you have is reports with no helpful info or crash dumps which is very odd.

Another possibility at the same time Avast 8 is released, Microsoft pushes out some Windows Updates which causes crashes and BSOD- http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-7-Update-Causes-Blue-Screen-of-Death-Some-Users-Report-334329.shtml

Enjoy!!

 

[avastalicious]

I can't explain them either. But people seem to report the issues more with Avast than with other vendors.

Btw, if you want to replicate the youtube problem, install Avast 8 on a machine with a Radeon HD 5000 or HD 6000 series graphics card.

After a restart you won't be able to watch any video on youtube in Firefox/IE (or any browser with NPAPI Flash). A green screen would be shown instead and the solution is deactivating hardware acceleration in Flash - or uninstalling Avast. The integrated PPAPI Flash in Chrome doesn't have this problem though.

Edit:
This seems to be fixed in the new 1483 update. Thanks Littlebits.

 

[Littlebits]

I can't explain them either. But people seem to report the issues more with Avast than with other vendors.

Btw, if you want to replicate the youtube problem, install Avast 8 on a machine with a Radeon HD 5000 or HD 6000 series graphics card.

After a restart you won't be able to watch any video on youtube in Firefox/IE (or any browser with NPAPI Flash). A green screen would be shown instead and the solution is deactivating hardware acceleration in Flash - or uninstalling Avast. The integrated PPAPI Flash in Chrome doesn't have this problem though.

This problem has already been fixed- http://malwaretips.com/Thread-AVAST-8-Program-update-8-0-1483

Thanks.

 

[3link9]

Thanks for the Replies guys,
I reinstalled the Pro version to see if the new program update had fixed anything and so far I haven't seen a CPU Spike and so far I have not had the youtube green screen problem (I have a Radeon HD 6310 on this laptop)
However, I gave its Sandbox on a trusted program that I know is clean as I had it for months without problems and so I ran it in the sandbox and It crashed on me and Avast became unresponsive and took about 5-10 minutes to recover itself. So far I have no experienced a blue screen... but that will just sneak up at anytime.
So I'll see what happens for the next couple of hours but it seems the only main problems that were fixed so far is the CPU leak and the Youtube problem.

 

[jamescv7]

That's a hard issue for the newly products of Avast, but the main thing important is the detection rates and performance itself should be maintained or increased.

 

[spywar]

Please read : http://www.avast.com/pr-protection-at-your-fingertips-the-new-avast-8
To Umbra : When you said V8 is just a minor update with bunch of fixes .. well, I really hope you were joking ^^.

 

[Deleted member 178]

A better cloud detection, 3 gadget features and a new UI is not a major improvement for me that deserve to be a new version.
I rather prefer they improve the BB and add the new firewall (even if i have to wait longer) instead of those gadgets.

Avast is a very good product for the average user but not for me, i am not impressed yet. Maybe i have to wait v9 in 6 months.