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Avast Antivirus
Avast Free Antivirus is a full-service antivirus that protects users from viruses, malware, trojans, and other types of attacks. It won the 2018 Product of the year award from AV-Comparatives and consistently tests high in the AVTest Best Antivirus Software for Windows Home Users category.
Aside from being very easy to navigate, one aspect of Avast Free Antivirus we really liked during testing is the ability to download, install, and use the application without having to provide any kind of personally-identifying information, including an email address. The security provided by the application is also top-of-the-line considering it’s a free product. Avast provides definition-based scanning as well as heuristic monitoring, ransomware detection, and a Gaming Mode for distraction-free gaming and streaming. Avast Free Antivirus also includes some premium-level features like a Wi-Fi scanner and a password vault.
Avast is available for Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7 (SP1 or higher) Vista, and XP (SP3 or higher); macOS 10.11 (El Capitan) or later, iOS 12.0 or later, and Android 4.1 Android 6.0 (Marshmallow, API 23) or higher.
Installing and activating an Avast product
Download and install your Avast product
To download and install your Avast product:
1. Click the button below to open our download and installation help page:
2. Use the Choose your product drop-down menu to select your purchased product.
3. Use the Choose your platform drop-down menu to select your platform.
4. Click See Installation Instructions, then follow the on-screen steps.
Your Avast product is now installed on your device. If you have not yet activated your subscription, refer the the next sections in this article for information about locating your activation code and activating your Avast product.
Locate Your Activation Code
You can find your activation code in one of the following locations:
• The Avast Account that is linked to the email address you provided during the subscription purchase.
• The order confirmation email that you received after purchase (usually from no.reply@avast.com).
• Another Avast product that you have already activated using the same activation code.
• The activation card that was included with your purchase in an Avast box or plastic case.
For detailed instructions on locating your activation code, refer to the following article:
• Locating your Avast activation code
For detailed instructions on retrieving an activation code from your Avast Account, refer to the following article:
• Retrieving an activation code from your Avast Account
Which Avast product(s) did I purchase?
Some Avast subscriptions are valid for multiple products, and some are valid for just one product. You can verify what is included in your Avast subscription using one of the methods below:
• Avast Account: Sign in to the Avast Account that is linked to the email address you provided at checkout, then click the Subscriptions tile. The valid platforms and products for each subscription are listed under Install on your devices.
• Order confirmation email: Locate the order confirmation email that you received after purchase (usually from no.reply@avast.com). The valid platforms and products are listed under Your products.
What happened with Windows 7?
The Operating system Windows 7 was launched in July 2009 and became hugely popular. Maintaining an operating system is difficult and costly, and Microsoft prefers to focus on its latest OS, Windows 10. Thus, like any other OS, Windows 7 had its lifespan, and in January 2015 Microsoft ended mainstream support for it. That meant that there were no improvements or new features added, but it was patched for vulnerabilities and fixed for bugs, remaining a safe operating system. In January 2020, Windows ended this support as well.
Does Avast's protection of my device running Windows 7 change?
Your Avast protection doesn’t change, whether you are using Avast Free Antivirus or Premium Security. Windows 7 users will still benefit from our most up-to-date protection against viruses, malware, and other threats – but please be aware that the risk of using an unsupported operating system does increase over time.
What does it mean that Avast will continue to provide virus definition updates and product updates for Windows 7?
It means that with product updates you will receive the latest version of Avast and all the new features with every release, while at the same time virus definition updates help to secure you from the latest malware and security threats. By default, Avast Antivirus is set to update the virus definitions and application automatically whenever a new version is available. We strongly recommend that you keep automatic updates enabled.
Do I have to do anything to keep my device protected?
The main risk of using unsupported software, including operating systems, is that it’s open to potential vulnerabilities and malware that might exploit them. Usually, when there’s a vulnerability found, Windows releases a patch (you might remember Bluekeep), it’s not going to be the case for Windows 7 anymore.
Second, the end of support for an operating system means that other software and hardware companies at some point will stop supporting it with their own programs/hardware. It won’t happen overnight – don’t worry. Google announced that it will continue supporting its Chrome browser on Windows 7 for at least 18 months.
Avast Antivirus Download for Windows 10, 8, 7
The users can perform the Avast download procedure on various devices such as macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows. This section of the write-up includes guidelines for the Avast download on Android devices. Therefore, the users are suggested to go through the below points.
• First of all, users are suggested to open the Google Play Store on their Android device.
• After that, the users are advised to search for the Avast antivirus in the search section.
• Next, a list of results will be displayed on the user’s screen under the page's search field.
• Now, the users are recommended to tap on the “Avast Antivirus.”
• After that, the users will be transferred to the Avast app page.
• Next, the users must tap on the “Install” button located on the page to start the installation process.
• After this, the users are advised to click on the “Accept” button.
• After that, the Avast app will begin with the installation process on the Android device.
• Once the installation process is complete, the users are suggested to click on the “Open” button or directly open the app by tapping on the app icon.
• After this, the users need to select the “Get Started” button located at the bottom of the page.
• Now, click on the “Start with basic security” link displayed at the bottom of the page.
• After this, the users need to click on the “Scan” option located at the screen's top.
• Note: The Avast Antivirus will now start scanning the user’s Android device for harmful threats or viruses.
• Finally, the users are suggested to wait for the scan to finish.
• Note: The scanning process can take up to 30-60 minutes and detect and remove any Android threats. The users may also require to take one more action once the scan is finished, i.e., “Confirm a virus deletion.”
Hence, the users can efficiently perform Avast download on the Android device by following the above guidelines.
Contact Avast Support
1. Go to the Avast Support webform.
2. Select your inquiry type and click Next.
3. Based on your selection, provide the required information and as much additional information as you believe is necessary.
4. Optionally, attach a file related to your inquiry (for example, if you have been requested to send a memory dump by Avast Support for troubleshooting purposes).
5. Click Submit Request.
A confirmation appears and an email is sent to you with the details of your ticket. You will receive a reply from an Avast Support representative by email.
Why Avast Professional Edition?
Avast antivirus software represents complete virus protection, offering full desktop security including a resident shield with anti-spyware technology. It can be downloaded and used free of charge for a 60-day trial period. At the end of the trial period, a license key must be purchased to continue using the product, which will be then valid for a further 1, 2, or 3 years. Daily automatic updates ensure continous data protection against all types of malware and spyware.
ALWIL Software offers a special discount program for all avast! antivirus products for non-profit, charity, educational, health and government institutions.
All-inclusive, comprehensive protection: avast! 4 Professional Edition includes anti-spyware protection, certified by the West Coast Labs Checkmark process, to protect against the latest spyware threats and anti-rootkit detection based on the best-in class GMER technology, built into the scan engine.
Simple to use and fully automated: Automatic incremental updates provide real-time protection of your system, including web surfing. We've made avast! antivirus as simple to use as possible, while allowing full control of your computer's security.
Tried and Trusted: With over 80 million users of avast!, you can rest assured that you are using one of the most tried and trusted antivirus products in Windows security. avast! supports more MS Windows versions (from Windows 95 to Vista 64-bit) than any other anti-malware product.
Some of Avast! Professional Edition's features include:
Anti-spyware built-in
Spyware is software installed on a computer that is designed to collect information about the computer user, often without their knowledge or consent. This can result in so called identity theft, or th eft of valuable information (e.g. bank or credit card details) or proprietary business data. Spyware is often developed by organized crime rings rather than lone individuals and may be installed by a virus.
Certified by West Coast Lab's Checkmark process, avast! has full anti-spyware capabilities built-in, to make your protection even more complete.
Anti-rootkit built-in
Rootkits are programs that install on your computer while keeping themselves and their activities hidden to remain invisible to the use. They represent a significant security risk on both home computers and company networks and are notoriously difficult to find and remove. Rootkits themselves are normally installed by a virus or other type of malware infection and it is therefore highly recommended that computer users have up to date antivirus/anti-spyware software installed and running on their computer. One such system is avast! antivirus.
Strong self-protection
Some viruses may attempt to switch off a computer's antivirus software. To help keep your protection working, even against the latest threats that may try to disable your security protection, avast! has best-in-class strong self-protection built in, to make sure, no matter what you face, avast! carries on protecting your valuable data and programs. This is based on the multi-award winning avast! antivirus technology and provides an extra layer of security to ensure your data and programs are always protected.
Antivirus kernel
The latest version of avast! antivirus kernel features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses. The kernel is certified by ICSA Labs; it frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, often yielding the VB100 award. The avast! engine also features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside the following archives: ARJ, ZIP, MIME (+ all associated formats), MAPI (Outlook pst files), DBX (Outlook Express archives), RAR, TAR, GZIP, CAB, BZIP2, ZOO, ACE, ARC, LHA/LHX, TNEF (winmail.dat), CPIO, CHM, RPM, ISO, 7ZIP and SIS. It also supports a number of executable packers (such as PKLite, Diet, UPX, ASPack, PeShield, FSG, MEW etc.). Last, but not least, it can also scan for viruses hidden in Alternate data streams on NTFS volumes.
Enhanced User Interface
In addition to the Simple User Interface, the Professional Edition presents the Enhanced User Interface, giving you access to all features and possibilities for extensive scanning control. Unlike the Simple User Interface, the scanning is performed by so-called "tasks". First, you define a task, including various parameters - areas to scan, what to scan, how to scan, etc. Having the task, you can run it (possibly repeatedly). Each task generates a list of results, which you can work with later.
Another key feature, closely connected with tasks, is the Scheduler. This feature gives you the ability to schedule the tasks running, either one-time or periodically. Additionally, it is possible to set all existing scanning options, a feature not available in the Simple User Interface.
Resident protection
Resident protection (the real-time protection of the computer system), is one of the most important features of an antivirus program today. avast! features a powerful resident module that is able to detect a virus before it has any chance to infect your computer. avast! Professional Edition contains resident protection of the computer file system and a resident module for e-mails and news. File system protection ensures that no virus will be started on the computer. It offers a wide range of settings, such as the possibility to specify that files will be scanned during copying, or scanning will include files with a given set of extensions only. E-mail/News protection consists of two independent modules; first, there is a generic scanner working on the SMTP/POP3/IMAP4/NNTP protocol level. It is capable of protecting any existing e-mail client that uses these protocols. Second, there is a special plugin for MS Outlook only; with mail scanning completely transparent, requiring no special settings.
A new feature of version 4 is heuristic analysis of e-mail scanners. This feature can protect against new, unknown viruses and worms that are not possible to detect by the usual means. The heuristic module performs a thorough investigation of every e-mail message and watches for suspicious signs that might announce virus presence. When the number of those signs exceeds the user-defined level, the message is considered dangerous and the user is warned.
Script Blocker
The resident protection of the Professional Edition includes an additional module, not contained in the Home Edition, called Script Blocker. This module watches all scripts being executed in the operating system (so-called WSH scripts - Windows Scripting Host), and scans all the scripts run as a part of a web page within your web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator and Mozilla).
P2P and IM Shields
Avast features a module for the protection of IM (Instant Messaging, "chat") programs, and a module for the protection of P2P (peer-to-peer) programs. The list of supported IM and P2P programs is extensive, with more than 30 programs currently supported. While chat itself would not pose any serious security risks in terms of viruses, today's IM applications are far from being just chatting tools: most support more or less sophisticated file sharing methods - which may quite easily lead to virus infections, if not properly monitored. The P2P protection module doesn't need much explanation - today's P2P networks (such as Kazaa) contain potentially thousands of infected files, and effective protection is essential.
Web Shield
Web Shield is a unique feature of Avast that enables it to monitor and filter all HTTP traffic coming from Web sites on the Internet. Since an increasing number of viruses (and other malware, such as adware, spyware and dialers) are being distributed via the World Wide Web, the need for effective countermeasures has also increased. Web Shield acts as a transparent HTTP proxy and is compatible with all major web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and Opera.
Automatic updates
Automatic updates are another key need in virus protection. Both the virus database and the program itself can be updated automatically. The updates are incremental, with only new or missing data downloaded: thus reducing the transfer heavily. The typical size of a virus database updates are tens of KB; program updates typically are in the hundreds of KB range.
PUSH updates
A special feature of the Professional Edition is PUSH updates. It is a dramatic change in the philosophy of updates. Usually, every installed program checks occasionally for new version availability. PUSH updates, however, are initialized by our server; they result in your computer quickly responding and performing the necessary update. The system is based on the SMTP protocol (as used for e-mail messages). The update itself is controlled by the Avast resident e-mail providers (MS Outlook and Internet Mail).
Virus Chest
The Virus Chest can be thought of as a folder on your disk drive, having special properties that make it a safe, isolated place suitable for storing certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest, though with some security restrictions. The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system. No outside process, such as a virus, may access the files inside, and the fact that the files inside the Chest may not be run (executable), there is no danger in storing viruses there.
System Integration
Avast! antivirus features outstanding integration into your system. A scan can be started directly from Windows Explorer, by clicking a folder or a file with your right mouse button and selecting the corresponding choice from the menu. A special screen-saver is also provided, that, when running, performs virus scanning. Avast! antivirus works together with your favorite screen-saver, so you don't have to change your personal settings to use it. A new option in this release is the boot-time scan (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista 32bit only). This important feature allows a user to instigate scanning before a virus is activated, in the case that a virus is suspected to be active on your computer already.
Command-line scanner
For experienced users, the Professional Edition features a command-line scanner. Scanning can be controlled by many arguments and switches; to use as a pipe filter; and a special STDIN/STDOUT mode is available. The module is intended to be used in BATCH programs. Its output is the same as the output from the Enhanced User Interface tasks (including the report files).
Integrated avast! Virus Cleaner
Since version 4.1, Avast includes Virus Cleaner, a tool designed for the complete removal of most common infections from already-infected computers. So now Avast is capable of reliably healing, and not just detecting, the most common malware. The number of viruses/worms supported by the Virus Cleaner is constantly growing. For the most up-to-date information we suggest visiting Virus Cleaner's own page. Note: For emergency purposes, we also offer Virus Cleaner as a standalone product, capable of running without installing Avast!.
Support for 64-bit Windows
Avast Home/Professional now fully supports the 64-bit Windows platform. ALWIL Software is anticipating massive growth of this platform, as Windows XP 64-Bit Edition will support up to 32 GB of RAM and 16 TB of virtual memory, enabling applications to run faster when working with large data sets. Applications can preload substantially more data into virtual memory, allowing rapid access by the 64-bit extensions of the processor. This reduces the time for loading data into virtual memory or seeking, reading, and writing to data storage devices, making applications run faster and more efficiently.
Internationalization
Commitment to internationalization is one of the key benefits of Avast!. During the last 2 years, Avast! has been translated to a number of languages, currently the list of supported languages is: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both Brazilian and Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.
Network Shield
A new resident protection module was added to Avast 4.5: the Network Shield. This module provides protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyzes all network traffic and scans for malicious content. It can be viewed as a lightweight firewall (or, more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System)). The Network Shield is only available on NT-based systems (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista).
