Family Historian User Group

Interesting that AV "problems" crops up again. Sometime ago I moved to AVAST, and mostly seems good, however I have just come across a problem, not directly related to FH, but might be of interest, and wondered if anyone else had had a similar problem.

AVAST has problems with using Windows System Restore if you have "self defense" enabled (Settings, Troubleshooting), this setting is default and normally recommended. As far as I can gather, the problem is that this setting upsets the windows restore. OK, just switch it off, unfortunately not, as, the restore puts Avast back to the state it was in when the restore was taken!
N.B. The restore seems to work fine (also in safe mode without avast running) only when windows is restarted does the error message occur.

So, in my situation there are 2 options:

1. disable the avast self defense before a restore point is taken (not forgetting to put it back on after the create restore point, or reinstalling the restore point). Of course, most restore points are taken automatically, but these are effectively useless.

2. Do a full system "image restore" (I use Macrium Reflect). Some would argue this is a better restore, but takes longer and can loose (restore old) "data" files including FH, so that would have to be restored.

So is it safer to use another AV! I moved to Avast from avira as that seemed to slow down my PC.

Jim, I have moved this to General because it is not really anything to do with AS v5 download problems (12490) due to AV.

Jim,

Most of the major Anti-Virus products seem to be getting increasingly aggressive in preventing Operating System changes. It's good in the sense that they are doing what they were designed to do, but problematic because they seem to block changes that the user actually wants to take place, without providing any visible notification or information.

This is causing major problems for many Windows users attempting to upgrade to Windows 10 (usually because the haven't read Microsoft's advice about uninstalling 3rd Party security software while carrying out the upgrade). These products also seem to be increasingly blocking Windows Updates from downloading and/or installing; the operation of applications that 'phone home' when used; and also the new Microsoft Edge Browser in Windows 10, because it doesn't (yet) accept add-ons/extensions, so the Anti-Virus products can't inject there own web monitoring tools into that Browser. It all usually ends up in a 3-way battle for control of the computer, between Windows, the Security Software and the User, which the User normally loses until they are aware of the cause!

Mervyn