Newsletter Archives

• Antivirus and Windows 8

  Posted on November 7, 2012 at 22:37 CST by woody • Comment in the Forums

  You probably guessed that I strongly recommend against installing  any third party antivirus software  in Windows 8. The built-in Win8 package works great,and it’ll never beg you for money.

  That said, I just received a sobering  overview of  known AV problems from EP:

  Now that Windows 8 is out to the masses, there are some antivirus – internet security suites that are not yet compatible with Windows 8.

   

  The folks of Avira have acknowledged that their antivirus software is incompatible with Win8 and may cause blue screen crashes on Win8 if Avira is installed on there:

  http://forum.avira.com/wbb/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=149515

   

  Even a recent version of Avast antivirus software can also cause BSODs on Win8 as noted in these Avast forum threads:

  http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=108731.0

  http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=107811.15

  http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=107886.0

  [a recent patch for Avast has been released to resolve the blue screen crashes on Win8] But the next release of Avast sometime in early 2013 will be fully Win8 compatible.

   

  and lastly the Lavasoft Ad-aware 10.x security software has some incompatibility issues on Windows 8 mentioned in this Lavasoft forum thread:

  http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?/topic/32920-windows-8-issues-with-enable-shop-and-bank-safely-online/

  I also read in the forum there that the upcoming Ad-aware version 10.4 will add full Windows 8 support, which will be due out in late November 2012.

   

  In the meantime, Windows 8 users should avoid using Avast, Avira or Lavasoft and switch to other internet security programs that are currently compatible with Windows 8.

  EP just sent me an update:

  a follow up on Avast.  It was already compatible with Windows 8 since version 7.0.1473, as noted on the Softpedia page on Avast’s history / changelog:

  http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Avast-Home-Edition-Changelog-6474.html

  I was not fully aware of this.

   

  Build 1473 of Avast 7.0 was released October 24 and build 1474 was released Nov. 1 to fix certain crashes on Windows 8.  A patch for Avast 7.0.1474 is made available here:

  http://public.avast.com/~rypacek/patches/

  this one should resolve more blue screen crashes with Avast 7 but this patch specifically requires version 7.0.1474 and won’t install on build 1473 or less.

   

  So Win8 users who have Avast 7.0 installed should upgrade to version 7.0.1474 and apply the aswnet.sys patch to fix most (if not all) of the serious crashes.

   

  You’ve probably guessed that I no longer use Avast – I’m Microsoft Security Essentials all the way in Win7, and use nothing besides the default (“Windows Defender”) in Win8.

  Windows Patches/Security Ad-aware, Avast, Avira, Windows 8 antivirus