It's like a protective moat around your PC, defending it in ways the antivirus layer can't. The firewall is your first line of defense against hackers, worms, WiFi spies, and a host of other threats. Those that ignore or don't understand its importance would be wide open to an array of phishing and other malware-related sites.

This isn't the smartest move by Avast since not everyone will know they need to install this separate component in the first place. Some desktop items remained, and there were still about 33% of our malware samples that remained in our folder, but they were quickly identified and blocked by Avast when we tried to launch them.ĭespite a few bumps and some long scanning times, Avast did pretty well overall with one concerning exception: antiphishing.ħ0% of active phishing sites were blocked, but only after we installed the Avast browser extension. The result was a nearly squeaky clean system. Hose that we could open were either blocked or delayed for further inspection by Avast.Īvast then prompted for more boot scans which again took quite awhile. With a fresh, updated version of Avast Internet Security (and fresh installs of Windows), we downloaded and installed malware onto the test PCs to measure Avast's real-time protection.įor starters, Avast started wiping out all of our malware samples before we could even open them. Very puzzling.Īfter a final reboot on each test PC, most test PCs had only one or two malware samples and a couple of adware desktop items that were still active.Īvast performed very well with real-time antivirus and malware protection. Zero!Įven though it obviously did a fairly thorough job, Avast claims to have found nothing. Still, despite a thorough boot scan, Avast bizarrely claimed it found zero threats.

How to avast boot scan