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How to install Avast Antivirus known as avast! Home Edition
avast! Home Edition is the free version of the well known antivirus. I am going to talk only about Avast Antivirus, I will use this name since it's more comfortable for me. If you are here, you're probably curious to see how to install Avast Antivirus on Windows. If you will install this antivirus for the first time or you are switching from another antivirus program to this one then you came to the right place. The purpose of this article as I said is to be your guide and to make the entire process as easy as possible. Avast is an extremely popular antivirus counting over 80 million users worldwide in 2009. It is one of the best and free antiviruses worldwide and it's a winner of many awards like Virus Bulletin VB100 Award, Secure Computing Readers' Trust Award and many others. I tried to make a short introduction and I am going to start with the article. First of all, please uninstall any antivirus that runs on your PC and then download Avast Antivirus. It's always recommended to download and install the latest version. The setup file should be around 300 KB and it was an excellent idea from the developers of this free antivirus ( ALWIL Software a.s. ) to create such a small setup file and I will tell you why. It doesn't matter what download web site you are going to use since the antivirus files and virus database will be downloaded on your computer from a direct, safe source and the speed will be fast ( depending on your Internet Speed ). Now let's start with our article. Supposing that you already downloaded the setup file it should look like in the following picture :
I shouldn't add this window but I was thinking to show you the entire installation process. Press "Run" in Windows XP SP 3 ( in Windows Vista or 7 this window will look different ) to open the setup file.
As you can see, the first two pictures wasn't necessary but I wanted to be as complete as possible. Here is the first window from the setup. Select your language ( default language is English ) and choose "Next" to start.
You will see a window that will use your Internet Connection in order to download the necessary files. If you are not connected to the Internet you will not be able to download them so make sure that you are connected to the Internet and please wait until the files are being downloaded ( it could take a couple of seconds or minutes or even more depending on your computer performance and your Internet Connection ).
Here it is, if the files were successfully downloaded you should see the following window that says : "Welcome to the avast! Setup program. This program will install avast! on your computer." and it's also recommended to exit all Windows programs before running this setup program. Click on "Next" button to continue.
Now you will see a "Read Me" window that will display the antivirus version and that will tell you what are the system requirements for a lot of Windows versions so I am going to publish them so that you can read them. At the time that this article was written, Windows 7 was not yet released it is a Release Candidate version and it will be launched in two months but if you meet the system requirements from Windows XP or Vista it should work on Windows 7 too. I just wanted to tell you about this so that I can avoid any confusions. Click on the "Next" button to continue if you are sure that your computer has the necessary resources.
avast! 4.8 Home/Professional Edition
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Welcome to the brand new version of the popular antivirus program avast! for 32-bit Windows operating systems: Windows 95/98/Me/NT4/2000/XP/Vista and 64-bit version of Windows XP/Vista.
System requirements:
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For a computer with Windows 95/98/Me:
PC 486, 32 MB RAM, 50 MB of free hard disk space
For a computer with Windows NT 4.0:
PC 486, 32 MB RAM, 50 MB of free hard disk space, Service Pack 3 or higher installed
For a computer with Windows 2000/XP:
PC Pentium, 64 MB RAM (128 MB recommended), 50 MB of free hard disk space
For a computer with Windows Vista:
PC Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 50 MB of free hard disk space
For a computer with Windows 7:
PC Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 50 MB of free hard disk space - it should use the same amount of resources like on Windows Vista and XP
(The program itself requires 20 MB, the rest is reserved for the virus recovery database file and its index. [VRDB, also known as the "integrity database" from the previous version])
- A functional MS Internet Explorer 4 or higher is required for the program to work.
Installation:
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- Make sure that your computer meets the minimal system requirements for the program installation.
- Run the installation file.
- Then follow the on-screen instructions.
Uninstallation:
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- Exit all running parts of avast! program.
- Via "Add/Remove programs" in Control panels perform the uninstallation.
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This is the "Licence Agreement" window and you need to read the entire licence to make sure that you agree with all terms listed there. If you agree with this licence agreement choose the radio button called "I agree" and press on the "Next" button.
This window is called "Destination" and you need to enter the path to where this antivirus will install. Actually you do not need to modify the default destination unless you want another place for the installation. As you can see the default installation folder will be in "C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4" except the latest part called "Avast4" since your version could be newer than mine and it could change his name in "Avast5", "Avast6", "Avast7" etc. If you are ready click on the "Next" button.
As you can see we are now at a window called "Configuration". This is the window that will allow us to make a "Typical" installation, a "Minimal" and a "Custom" installation so I am going to choose "Typical". If you need to change anything else ( this is for advanced users ) you need to choose "Custom". As I said I am going to choose "Typical" and click on the "Next" button to continue.
Now we have another confirmation window for the previous one. It's called "Installation information" and says that the setup will install the following components:
Skins
Instant Messaging
P2P Shield
Internet Mail
Outlook/Exchange
Network Shield
Web Shield
Standard Shield
English language extension
English help
Installed in: "C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4" - this could be a different version for you like Avast5, Avast6, Avast7 etc.
Required disk space: 60,051 KB - this size could be smaller or larger depending on your version for me it's approx. 60 MB.
Free space: 2,903,624 KB - This will be different depending on how much free space is available on your PC, so you should see a different size.
If everything is OK, choose the "Next" button. If you need to change something press the "Back" button and go back and change anything you want but you will need to choose "Custom" type.
Please be patient as the antivirus will install the necessary files on your computer. When it will finish it will appear a small window that will ask you : "Do you wish to schedule a boot-time antivirus scan of your local hard drives? The scan will be performed after your computer is restarted." I suggest you to choose "Yes" if you have some time for a scan of your hard drives. If you're in a hurry and you are sure that your computer is clean you can choose "No". As you can see I chosed "Yes".
Finally we can see a message in this window that says "Setup finished" and we are almost ready but wait, we need to restart the computer. I would recommend you to choose "Restart" and make sure to save your work since your computer will restart right away. Click on "Finish" button.
If you chosed in the previous window to schedule a boot-time antivirus scan of your local hard drives when your PC will start you will see a blue window ( it will look different on Windows XP, Vista or 7 ) like the one in the following picture. I would suggest you to have patience and let him to scan all of your hard drives. At the end it will display the report.
Supposing that the scan has finished when your desktop will start you should see a notification window that tells you more things about Avast Antivirus.
"Welcome to avast! Home Edition - Free AV!"
"avast! Home Edition is free for home, non-commercial use. However, before using the product, you are kindly asked to register it on our web site. You have 60 days to do the registration."
"The registration process will only take a few minutes, and when you are done, you will get your own licence key valid for 14 months. Of course, after that period you can register again and get a new key..."
And there are two links, the first one will take you to the registration page and the second one will give you more information about the professional edition. Since this article is focused only on the installation I will skip the registration process for now ( in maximum 60 days you will need to register this antivirus ) and I will click on "OK" button to close this window.
For the first time, a small blue icon will appear on our launch bar and says something like that: "avast!Resident Protection" - The blue avast! icon in the notification are of your desktop is used to report the status of avast! resident protection. When crossed-out, the protection is inactive. When gray, it is waiting for something. And finally when blue, you are protected." It will appear a second informative icon and it will close by itself but you can also close them manually.
Avast Antivirus Free has been installed on your computer but I wanted to show you two more things. How to access the "control center" called "On-Access Protection Control" and how to "Start avast! Antivirus". Let's access the "On-Access Protection Control", to do so do a right-click with your mouse on the blue, avast icon located on the right side of your launch bar and a small window will open. From there as I said choose the first option called "On-Access Protection Control".
A new window will open called "Resident Protection". From here you can adjust the level of your protection from "Normal" to "High", it also allows you to "Pause" the resident protection and also to "Terminate". Down this window is a small button called "Details..." if you will click on this button this window will become larger and it will show you more options to choose from.
Let's repeat the same action: do a right-click with your mouse on the blue, avast icon located on the right side of your launch bar and a small window will open. From there choose the second option called "Start avast! Antivirus" like in the following picture :
And here it is, the simple and intuitive Avast Antivirus interface. As you may noticed it looks like an music player so this interface is really easy to use and it has a small display that will show you the current version of virus database, the level of the resident protection, date of last scan, automatic updates.
That's it, from now on you can perform a full scan, quick scan or any actions. Here it is a suggestion if you don't find the intuitive interface. I will try to offer a basic explanation for each button here but I will not get in details too much for each button. So let's get started by taking the first button from the left side, check our map to see the full explanation for each button :
1 - Menu - Show the program menu.
2 - Start - Start the scan of selected area.
3 - Stop - The stop button, you can stop a scan.
4 - Virus Chest - Use this button to open the virus chest.
5 - Resident Scanner - Set the sensitivity of the resident scanner by pressing this button.
6 - iAvs - Update the virus database.
7 - Local disks - Press this button to select all local non-removable disks.
8 - Removable Media - Use this button to select removable media to scan.
9 - Folder Selection - Press this button to define additional areas to test.
And that's it, the purpose of this article was to show you how to install Avast Antivirus alias avast! Home Edition and I hope you enjoyed my article. As you may notice this article will cover a basic installation and it is not supposed to show you how to configure and use Avast. Perhaps we will cover those aspects in a future article. I hope that it was useful and I encourage anyone to leave a comment or suggest anything else so please do not hesitate to contact us