Hey, lets tune up your PC!
Remove annoying ads / nag screens in AVG Free and Avira AntiVir Personal
The free versions of AVG and Avira AntiVir are rock solid antiviruses, constantly making it to the top in comparison charts and hitting millions of downloads every week. However as with many other free product versions, they too come with ads which just don’t look great on the desktop. In AVG, there’s a permanent ad in the footer of the program that either warns you of dangerous websites or goads you on to upgrade to paid versions. The AntiVir ad (that again asks you to upgrade) pops up every time a big update is downloaded.
Being the great free products they are, these pop-ups are definitely a minor annoyance. But still if you would rather have it ad-free without dishing out a few bucks, there are workouts to have the ads removed in both these programs! Lets see how.
Do check the comments below. A lot of alternate ways have been mentioned by our readers!
AVG Free Edition
Removing the footer notification in AVG Free’s user interface requires a simple tweak. Open Computer (My Computer in XP) and navigate to the place where you installed AVG – by default it should be C: > Program Files > AVG > AVG8. Find out these two files – avgmwdef_us.mht and avgresf.dll – and rename them to anything else. By anything, I mean ANYTHING. This two files basically make up the footer banner, and renaming them will prevent AVG from finding them!
Avira AntiVir Personal
As I said, Avira’s nag screen appears almost after every update. To remove this, navigate to the place where you installed Avira AntiVir Personal – by default, it is C: > Program Files > Avira > AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic. Right click on the avnotify.exe file, and select Properties.
Open the Security tab, and under “Group or user names” select SYSTEM and click Edit… Put a checkmark under the Deny list for “Read and execute”. A final OK and the nag screen will be put to rest.
Did you find the tips useful? Let us know in the comments! And while you’re at it, check out our top tips to “fortify your computer“, and the latest and best free antivirus tools for Windows. 
| Print article |
about 1 year ago
Previously, you used to say that you don’t like AVG and now you says that the above two’s are rock solid Anti-viruses?
about 1 year ago
I’m still not saying I quite like AVG Free. That never means it doesn’t have to be good, I didn’t even say it was bad in that post as well.
about 1 year ago
Excellent Advice for removing the annoying upgrade slide ads that figure at the bottom of the update page for AVG Free. Thanks Heaps.
about 1 year ago
Sorry .. but i cant find the security window ..i have Avira AntiVir Personal.. I finded this file .avnotify.exe but if i open the properties then there isn´t that security part
(( Help please ..
about 1 year ago
@Anonymous No.2
1.Are you using Windows XP or Vista? I wrote this tutorial for Vista, though I think it’ll be valid for XP as well. This may not be the exact way in XP, but there must be some other way around to disable the file from being read and written – thoroughly go through the Properties window.
2.You can get a valid 6-month license for AntiVir Premium from their website. Read this post for more :
http://www.techzilo.com/free-license-key-avira-antivirus/
3.Please don’t post anonymously.
about 1 year ago
If you need to stop the nag scrren for XP home and the other NT flavors, try this website.
http://www.elitekiller.com/files/disable_antivir_nag.htm
I comment here however because all these solutions take a NTFS partition for granted. However, in XP Home installations with FAT partitions, Advanced Security is not available nor is the Local Security Policy Snap-In. A quick fix is to export the registry key created by a XP Pro machine and then import it into the XP Home registry. To save others the trouble, here it is:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Safer\CodeIdentifiers\0\Paths\{64178350-f653-4f7a-91d1-01c97c35f8d7}]
“LastModified”=hex(b):30,f4,93,a3,b8,97,c9,01
“Description”=”"
“SaferFlags”=dword:00000000
“ItemData”=”C:\\Program Files\\Avira\\AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic\\avnotify.exe”
about 1 year ago
Thanks a lot for posting that!
about 1 year ago
Thanks very much for the help with AVG.
about 1 year ago
I think that it should also be noted that for the AVG ad removal you also have to rename avgfree_us.mht as well. This may have been added in an update by them, I do not know.
about 1 year ago
NickC’s reg entry worked fine and dandy. Thank you, sir!
I had to modify the last line a little to make it point to the location of avnotify.exe on my computer, though. The text, “AntiVir PersonalEdition Classic”, was replaced with “AntiVir Desktop”.
about 1 year ago
Perfect, modifying the system permissions did the trick. Thank you for the tip.
about 1 year ago
I’m really glad and thankful to everyone who is responding, but PLEASE do use a NAME. Frankly speaking, I hate anonymous comments. I’m not like hijacking your names or something.
about 1 year ago
There, my names jotted!
Anyway, I have been using AVGfree for quite some time, on quite a few pc’s and it runs fine. I have always known about the trick to remove the banner, however instead of renaming the files, I have always just deleted them with no issues. They never came back and no problems. All of my instalations are ad-free.
Nice post!
about 1 year ago
@Barry
Thanks.
It really pisses me off to see anonymous comments.
about 1 year ago
yay it works!!! has disable the splash screen too!!!
Thanks!!
I just wonder what other free security product would work well with either avira or avg.
about 2 months ago
Just came across this post today. AVG Free on my personal PC starting giving me pop up ads like AntiVir does. That was the main reason I switched to AVG some time ago. Well, I changed the dll and all the MHTML files and hope that it will remove th popup as well as the banner. The banner never bothered me much, but the popup has to go.
Another free program that I like it Comodo Firewall. Just like most other free software, you have to pay attention when installing to avoid browser toolbars and other products (antivirus), but their firewall is very nice.
about 2 months ago
@Jarrod
I’d recommend that you switch to Microsoft Security Essentials. Simply put, it’s the best free security solution out there and even improves upon most of the commercial offerings on the web. Add Comodo firewall to that, and you’ve got rock solid PC protection. Personally, I’m happy with the advanced firewall in Windows 7, but Comodo is undoubtedly much better.