Avast Free Antivirus

What's new in this version:

Standard Shield: by default, system DLLs are not scanned anymore (speed optimization)
- further improved Standard Shield speed under Windows XP (generally, less files are scanned)
- Standard Shield: improved compatibility with Microsoft Office (particularly, saving of Excel documents on network shares)
- mail scanner now doesn't show Timeout Expired messages; the program was modified so that the respective timeout can be controlled by the mail client itself
- mail scanner: solved problem with the mail client reporting expired timeouts when sending larger emails via slow connectections
- mail scanner: fixed problem with delays during IP address reverse-lookup
- mail scanner: fixed displaying of tray icon
- P2P Shield: added support for Winny2 and Google Talk
- Web Shield: improved compatibility with Win9x
- transition to new data storage - avast does not need the ODBC/Jet drivers anymore and should therefore work better even under older versions of Windows (95/98/ME, NT4)
- fixed a bug in the Script Blocker module that was causing conflicts with some programs under non-English Windows (e.g. the German invoice system Lexware)
- added support for additional executable packers (e.g. MoleBox)
- fixed a bug that was sometimes causing very slow scanning of CAB archives
- boot-time scanner: added support for additional archives (GZ, BZIP2, TAR, LHARC, ZOO)
- improved handling of infected files with exotic filenames
- solved a problem with setting of incorrect access rights to the avast executable files
- removed a limit of maximal length of winpopup alerts (used to be 128 characters)
- Enhanced User Interface: infected items are now marked as red
- implemented new method of deleting of locked infected files (now using the boot-time scanner technology)
- this new version is now compatible with the Windows Disk Protection feature from Microsoft Shared Computing Toolkit.
- Avast should now work flawlessly with Windows Vista beta 2 and higher (Vista beta 2 will be released in the first half of May, i.e. in about 3 weeks); unfortunately, in beta1 + CTP builds <= 5342 there still can be serious OS stability issues