I no longer use Avira since they have sold out and now want you to install the Ask toolbar and won't take no for an answer. For my customers I now install
Avast Antivirus
www.avast.com

Avira is currently the antivirus I put on all of my customers systems and my own.
I based what antivirus to use for my customers on a few things.

1. Must be free
2. Must not put a performance hit on the system.
3. Must be good at finding viruses.


Avira does something that backfires. They include a giant pop up box asking the user to upgrade to the pro version.

Now Avira only does this once a day. The draw back? Numerous customers thought it was an infection or spam!
They are so use to seeing giant pop up's as being bad that they got angry that I put a antivirus on there that was doing it. Even though I told them it only happens once a day they didn't care.

So the fix? To block that pop up. And believe it or not most of my customers have bought the pro version because they liked how good the free version was. And this is with the pop ups blocked :-)

So the trick is in the Windows Registry. I have also attached a reg file to this page that you can download.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\safer\codeidentifiers\0\Paths\{12af7d6a-aeed-4c09-a5c7-dd1f0e3fb07d}]
"LastModified"=hex(b):fc,5e,32,3c,e3,3b,ca,01
"Description"=""
"SaferFlags"=dword:00000000
"ItemData"="C:\\Program Files\\Avira\\AntiVir Desktop\\avnotify.exe"

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Group Policy Objects\{AC9646BD-FD7E-4EE0-99E5-78A91B114A5B}Machine\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Safer\CodeIdentifiers\0\Paths\{12af7d6a-aeed-4c09-a5c7-dd1f0e3fb07d}]
"LastModified"=hex(b):fc,5e,32,3c,e3,3b,ca,01
"Description"=""
"SaferFlags"=dword:00000000
"ItemData"="C:\\Program Files\\Avira\\AntiVir Desktop\\avnotify.exe"
 

What we are doing is telling windows not to allow the Avira pop up exe to run. Keep in mind the malwarebytes program flags it as a bad reg key. This is because normally users dont block exe's from running. So it flags anything as it. You can just add that key to its ignore list :-)

I hope in the future Avira will redo their pop up. And instead of a spam looking window they can just have something in their program itself as its running a scan or something.

Enjoy!
-Shane