Raymond.CC Blog

For those of us who use an antivirus, they come in one of two flavours. Free, and paid. And as many of their users, as well as Softpedia can attest, they are just as good, if not better then their paid counterparts. As a person who tries to live off the freebies as much as he can, a good free protector is a life saver.

But there is a trade off for using some of the better ones, like Avast and Avira. They come with ads, which remind you that, they too, are trying to make a living. And that they’d like you to upgrade and pay for their antiviruses. AVG, Panda Cloud, and Microsoft Security Essentials doesn’t carry out advertisements in their programs, but as most of us can tout, AVG simply not ready for the big time anymore, missing viruses, trojans, and worms here and there. For those that don’t want a cloud scanner or want to be asked about Windows Updates (since that’s how MSE updates), it leaves us with two wholesome choices: Avast Free, or Avira AntiVir Personal. And while we’d rather you not block our ads, I’m going to show you how to block their ads.

Depending on your operating system, you’ll have to do different things to block Avira’s ads from popping up.

Windows 7: Open the control panel, then locate and run the Administrative Tools option. For those new to using the Administrative Tools, it is basically a folder shortcut, and the program we’re looking for is Local Security Policy. When you run it, go to the Software Restriction Policy under
Click on Software Restriction Policy subfolder, and select the Additional Rules option, before right clicking on the second pane. Right-click on the right pane, and go to Additional Rules, then New Path Rule. Click Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\ and double-click avnotify.exe, then set the security level to Disallowed, click Apply and then OK. Close out of the Administrative tools.

Windows XP users can do one of two options, they can run at the Command Line Prompt (Start>Run>cmd.exe and hit enter) then in the box that pops up, they can run
cacls “%SYSTEMDRIVE%\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avnotify.exe” /e /d username
where username is the name you use to log in. If you’d like an even simpler way of doing it, ClickOff is a handy utility to do such a thing, if you just hit the hotkey and select the advertisement window, it closes automatically for you.

Windows Vista users can use the same tip that Windows 7 uses, or they can also direct themselves to C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\, right-click avnotify.exe and go to Properties, then under the Security tab, under the group or username SYSTEM, click edit. This will pop open with a new window where you can put a checkmark under the DENY comlumn for “read and execute”, thus making it impossible to run.

However, unlike Avira, Avast’s advertisement comes on it’s main screen, when you open it up to run a scan of your computer completely, it shows up there, as seen in the screenshot below.

Thanks to one of our forum members, LeoFelix, he has managed to find a way to block that ad from popping up as well. A simple edit of the HOSTS file on your computer blocks this ad entirely, while keeping your system fully protected.

The places to look for your host file in Windows Vista and 7 is:
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\ or %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\
Under Windows XP Pro, the same file is located in:
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
and finally, Windows XP Home, it is located in:
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

All you have to do is open the HOSTS file as an administrator and add one line, which is:
127.0.0.1 program.avast.com
That’s it! That sends the ad looking for itself into the loopback interface, meaning it’s no longer going to be shown on your PC. One reboot and it’s gone, at least until Avast updates it’s location of the advertisement.

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