Avira AntiVir Personal is probably the best free anti virus software. It is free of charge, updates daily, detects almost every virus, troyan, worm or whatever, and is not as annoying as other software as Kaspersky with lots of security warnings, extra firewalls, ect…
The only bad thing is that after every update a popup containing advertisement is shown. This banner is always the same and shown almost every day since AntiVir updates as often as once a day. Here I will show you how to disable the annoying ad banner without having to hack/crack/patch AntiVir.
This works only with Windows XP, perhaps I will find a way for Vista or Windows 7 some time!
Click on Start -> Run… -> type “secpol.msc†(without the quotes) and press enter to open the local security settings.
If you never created any security policies before, you have to set them up first. In order to do that, right-click the “Software Restriction Policies” entry on the left and choose “Create New Policies”. If you did anything in that section before, you can skip this step.
Now the folders “Security Levels” and “Additional Rules” should be there. Navigate to “Additional Rules”, right-click and choose “New Path Rule…”. In the window popping up click browse and navigate to your AntiVir folder (usually C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic) and select the “avnotify.exe” file. Set “Security level” to “Disallowed” if it isn’t already and hit OK.
This tweak forbids the execution of the “avnotify.exe” file which is responsible for the popups. Deleting the file is not possible, AntiVir will crash when trying to access it. This works as long as the filename of “avnotify.exe” is not changed through an update, and if it is, you can do the same thing for the new file.
Thanks to ghacks.net
March 13th, 2009 at 6:25 am
this works with vista also
March 13th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
@woffko:
My friend tried it, but it didn’t work for him. Can you tell me where you found the option? (Don’t have Vista here right now to try it…)
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:35 am
It doesn’t work on xp home.
there’s no such thing as secpol.msc
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
@Dave:
I have XP Professional on all my computers, so I didn’t know that… There doesn’t seem to be any similar function in Home, so you have to search for another solution
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 am
What a rigamarol. Why take a chance on screwing up your regisgtry. An easy way to kill the Avira Notifier ad (and a lot of others including dialog buttons) is with Clickoff. You can download it at http://www.snapfiles.com/reviews/clickoff/clickoff.html
July 7th, 2009 at 10:18 am
@jlhns:
This has nothing to do with screwing up your registry, these XP tools won’t destroy it. But your tool will probably work as well.
July 18th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Sorry for delay
http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/5389/win7vistaavira.jpg
For Vista and win7 there is practically the same way as described in article.
But with xp pro I have the same problem as Dave – the “Software Restriction Policies” just missing in applet.