Avast Professional Edition 4.8.1351

Avast Professional Edition 4.8.1351 provides you a collection of easy-to-use yet effective technologies that work in perfect synergy to protect your system and valuable data against computer viruses, spyware and rootkits. It represents a best-in-class antivirus solution for any Windows-based workstation. This page describes its most important features and provides links to further resources.
Avast Professional Edition 4.8.1351 can be downloaded and used free of charge for a 60-day trial period. At the end of the trial period, a license key must be purchased to continue using the product, which will be then valid for a further 1, 2, or 3 years. 

Major Features:

1. Anti-spyware built-in
   
   • Spyware is software installed on a computer that is designed to collect information about the computer user, often without their knowledge or consent. This can result in so called identity theft, or theft of valuable information (e.g. bank or credit card details) or proprietary business data. Spyware is often developed by organized crime rings rather than lone individuals and may be installed by a virus.
   • Certified by West Coast Lab's Checkmark process, avast! has full anti-spyware capabilities built-in, to make your protection even more complete.
2. Anti-rootkit built-in
   
   • Rootkits are programs that install on your computer while keeping themselves and their activities hidden to remain invisible to the use. They represent a significant security risk on both home computers and company networks and are notoriously difficult to find and remove.
   •  Rootkits themselves are normally installed by a virus or other type of malware infection and it is therefore highly recommended that computer users have up to date antivirus/anti-spyware software installed and running on their computer. One such system is avast! antivirus.
   • Based on the class-leading GMER technology, avast! can now scan your live system for rootkit infections; no boots disks are required. If a rootkit is discovered, it is initially disabled and then if it can be safely removed without affecting the performance of the computer, it is removed. avast! antivirus includes a virus database which can be automatically updated to provide continuous protection against rootkits.
     
3. Strong self-protection
   
   • Some viruses may attempt to switch off a computer's antivirus software. To help keep your protection working, even against the latest threats that may try to disable your security protection, avast! has best-in-class strong self-protection built in, to make sure, no matter what you face, avast! carries on protecting your valuable data and programs. This is based on the multi-award winning avast! antivirus technology and provides an extra layer of security to ensure your data and programs are always protected.
     
4. Antivirus kernel:
   
   • The latest version of avast! antivirus kernel features outstanding detection abilities, together with high performance. You can expect 100% detection of In-the-Wild viruses (viruses already spreading between users) and excellent detection of Trojan horses.
   • The kernel is certified by ICSA Labs; it frequently takes part in the tests of Virus Bulletin magazine, often yielding the VB100 award.
   • The avast! engine also features outstanding unpacking support. It can scan inside the following archives: ARJ, ZIP, MIME (+ all associated formats), MAPI (Outlook pst files), DBX (Outlook Express archives), RAR, TAR, GZIP, CAB, BZIP2, ZOO, ACE, ARC, LHA/LHX, TNEF (winmail.dat), CPIO, CHM, RPM, ISO, 7ZIP and SIS. It also supports a number of executable packers (such as PKLite, Diet, UPX, ASPack, PeShield, FSG, MEW etc.).
   • Last, but not least, it can also scan for viruses hidden in Alternate data streams on NTFS volumes.
     
5. Simple User Interface
   
   • The Simple User Interface is used to start on-demand scanning, work with the results and change various options. Basic resident protection settings can be modified here.
   • The Simple User Interface is the main application of avast! 4 Home Edition. You can start additional avast! modules from here, such as the Virus Chest, Updater or Log Viewer.
   • The appearance of the Simple User Interface is very flexible. It supports so-called skins (changeable appearance of the application), so you can change the interface to suit you. The main package contains three skins, with additional skins available from server; they result in your computer quickly responding and performing the necessary update. The system is based on the SMTP protocol (as used for e-mail messages). The update itself is controlled by the avast! resident e-mail providers (MS Outlook and Internet Mail).
   • The whole system is protected by asymmetric ciphers and is resistant to unauthorized misuse.
6. Virus Chest
   
   • The Virus Chest can be thought of as a folder on your disk drive, having special properties that make it a safe, isolated place suitable for storing certain files. You can work with the files in the Chest, though with some security restrictions.
   • The main properties of the Virus Chest are complete isolation from the rest of the operating system. No outside process, such as a virus, may access the files inside, and the fact that the files inside the Chest may not be run (executable), there is no danger in storing viruses there.
7. System integration
   
   • avast! antivirus features outstanding integration into your system. A scan can be started directly from Windows Explorer, by clicking a folder or a file with your right mouse button and selecting the corresponding choice from the menu.
   • A special screen-saver is also provided, that, when running, performs virus scanning. avast! antivirus works together with your favorite screen-saver, so you don't have to change your personal settings to use it.
   • A new option in this release is the boot-time scan (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista 32bit only). This important feature allows a user to instigate scanning before a virus is activated, in the case that a virus is suspected to be active on your computer already.
8. Command-line scanner
   
   • For experienced users, the Professional Edition features a command-line scanner. Scanning can be controlled by many arguments and switches; to use as a pipe filter; and a special STDIN/STDOUT mode is available.
   • The module is intended to be used in BATCH programs. Its output is the same as the output from the Enhanced User Interface tasks (including the report files).
9. Integrated avast! Virus Cleaner
   
   • Since version 4.1, avast! includes Virus Cleaner, a tool designed for the complete removal of most common infections from already-infected computers. So now avast! is capable of reliably healing, and not just detecting, the most common malware.
   • The number of viruses/worms supported by the Virus Cleaner is constantly growing. For the most up-to-date information suggest visiting Virus Cleaner's own page. Note: For emergency purposes, also offer Virus Cleaner as a standalone product, capable of running without installing avast!.
10. Support for 64-bit Windows
    
    • avast! Home/Professional now fully supports the 64-bit Windows platform. ALWIL Software is anticipating massive growth of this platform, as Windows XP 64-Bit Edition will support up to 32 GB of RAM and 16 TB of virtual memory, enabling applications to run faster when working with large data sets. Applications can preload substantially more data into virtual memory, allowing rapid access by the 64-bit extensions of the processor. This reduces the time for loading data into virtual memory or seeking, reading, and writing to data storage devices, making applications run faster and more efficiently.
    • Regular (32-bit) antivirus applications are unable to operate correctly on the 64-bit Windows platform, because they rely on 32-bit kernel-mode drivers. The latest version of avast! uses native 64-bit drivers, delivering the same level of protection as the 32-bit Windows environments. The installation package is the same for 32-bit and 64-bit versions - the setup program automatically detects the operating system it is running on and installs all necessary files. You may find more information on avast! Antivirus and Windows x64 Edition page.
11. Internationalization
    
    • Commitment to internationalization is one of the key benefits of avast!. During the last 2 years, avast! has been translated to a number of languages, currently the list of supported languages is: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (both Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both Brazilian and Portugal), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.
      
12. Network Shield
    
    • A new resident protection module was added to avast! 4.5: the Network Shield. This module provides protection against known Internet worms/attacks. It analyzes all network traffic and scans for malicious content. It can be viewed as a lightweight firewall (or, more precisely, an IDS (Intrusion Detection System)).
    • The Network Shield is only available on NT-based systems (Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista).

Enhancements: 

• Improvements in some unpackers (WinExec, Installers, Droppers)
• Various fixes and improvements in the scanning engine
• Standard Shield: stability improvements in the kernel-mode drivers
• Preparations for smoother migration to v5 (when it's released)

Requirements:

• For a computer running Windows® 95/98/Me:486 Processor, 32MB RAM and 100MB of free hard disk space.
• For a computer running Windows® NT® 4.0:486 Processor, 24MB RAM and 100MB of free hard disk space and Service Pack 3 (or higher) installed
• For a computer running Windows® 2000/XP® Workstation (Not Server):Pentium class Processor, 64MB RAM (128MB recommended) and 100MB of free hard disk space
• For a computer running Windows® XP® 64-bit Edition:An AMD Athlon64, Opteron or Intel EM64T-enabled Pentium 4 / Xeon processor, 128MB RAM (256MB recommended) and 100MB of free hard disk space
• For a computer running Windows® Vista:Pentium 4 processor, 512MB RAM and 100MB of free hard disk space
• For a computer running Windows® Vista 64-bit Edition:An AMD Athlon64, Opteron or Intel EM64T-enabled Pentium 4 / Xeon processor, 128MB RAM (256MB recommended) and 100MB of free hard disk space
• The program itself requires about 60MB of hard disk space; the remainder of the recommended space 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.
• This product cannot be installed on a server operating system (Windows NT/2000/2003/2008 Server families).