Recently switched to Avira Personal and was annoyed by the popup advertisements and the fact you can only update once a day. I figured ways around these limitations and wanted to share it with those of you who use it. By doing them my complaints go to zero on a free application that does everything I need it to.

1) Advertisement pop-ups.

They come from avnotify.exe in "C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir Desktop"

To prevent them from happening do Start | Run | secpol.msc | Software Restriction Policies | Additional Rules | Right click in white space | New Path Rule and set the following...

2) Update more frequently than a day.

For those of you who have tried to change the schedule in Avira you cannot change it to anything below a day. You can get around this by disabling the schedule in Avira and handling it through Windows Scheduled Tasks. I am going to assume you know how to create a Hourly task.

Here is the command-line:

"C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\update.exe" /DM="1" /NOMESSAGEBOX /receivetimeout=180

/DM="1" hides the message box and /DM="0" shows the box.

Edited September 9, 200916 yr by snooz

May I add:

Disable the notify if you have Windows Home version, which doesn't Local Group Policy:

1. Boot in safemode (F8).

2. Go to Avira install folder and right click Properties on the file "avnotify.exe".

3. In Properties, choose "Security" tab, then click on "Advanced" button.

4. In the Advanced Security Settings window and within the Permission entries list, select "SYSTEM" and click "Edit" button.

5. Check the box "Deny" for Traverse folder / Execute file.

6. OK all the windows until they all close and reboot.

Disable the splash screen at start up:

Regedit -> HKLM -> Microsoft -> Windows - > CurrentVersion -> Run - > avgnt. Add "/ns" in the end of the path value.

(For Avira8 I believe you have to add "/nosplash" instead.)

Edited September 18, 200916 yr by eksasol

Thanks for the splash hide eksasol

Eksasol,

Thanks for the no splash hint.

It didn't work for me at first. I had to delete " /min" before adding "/ns" then it worked fine.

Snooz,

I tried to block ads popups by following your guide too. I will tell about it tomorrow because I've already let it update today. Surely it will work, huh? So, thank you for posting the tricks. I need the first one only!

‹Edit /›

It works perfect! I don't know that we can totally get rid of this small annoyance. Thank you both again for the tricks of no popups and no splash. I'll pass it to my sister too.

Edited October 9, 200916 yr by Yzöwl