I have found Avira Free to be quite a decent piece of software and as such have switched over to it from AVG. However the nagware is a pain in the arse! This is a very simple way of disabling it in XP Pro/Vista Ultimate.
- Open the ‘Local Security Policy (Local Security Settings) Panel’, found under ‘Control Panel > Administrative Tools’.
- Open the ‘Software Restriction Policies’ directory.
- If there is an ‘Additional Rules’ directory ignore this step, otherwise click the ‘Action’ menu (at the top) and select ‘Create New Restriction Policies’
- Open the ‘Additional Rules’ directory
- Click the ‘Action’ menu (at the top) and select ‘New Path Rule…’
- Click the ‘Browse’ button and navigate to your Avira install directory, usually ‘C:\Program Files\Avira\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic’
- Highlight ‘avnotify.exe’ and click the ‘Ok’ button.
Now Avira will function as normal, however you won’t get the annoying nag screen every time it updates.
