Is this method to disable Avira Free Antivirus popups valid?

In the comments on the download page http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/avira_free_antivirus.html one of the suggestions is to uninstall the "Avira" application from Programs and Features.

The actual comment was "You want to limit the nagging "pop-ups"??? Just go to your Control Panel / Programs and Files and you will see 2 Avira programs, (1) Avira Antivirus and (2) just Avira. Just uninstall the second "Avira" and your good to go. Enjoy an excellent, easy and FREE antivirus...."

Is this a good way to disable any popups that may occur or will it disrupt the antivirus program?

 

I think a safer option is to look if there is an entry for Avira Online Essential in Windows' Services. Disable the Startup type and if you have problems you can just change it back to what it was.

 

There's no entry for that unfortunately. There is a program called BgPKiller which is supposed to stop the popups but since I can't find it on this site I'm not sure of it's quality.

There are other methods which involve disabling the execution of "avnotify.exe" and "ipmgui.exe" by changing the permissions on these files. There is even a method involving putting them into quarantine in Avira itself.

I'm not sure which way to go right now. I hope a user of Avira who has been able to block these popups can see this and post their method.

 

Personally I can't be doing with these AV programs that keep popping up quite unnecessarily so I have long used the inbuilt Defender, previously named Microsoft Security Essentials. No popups with that! I have never had anything worse than a PUP on any of the systems here and an MBAM scan soon gets rid of them.

 

I installed Avira Free Antivirus a couple of days ago and have not seen any popups, except for the update
notification that is a selected option.

There is a service named Avira.ServiceHost.exe that is set to Automatic. That file is in the
C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\Launcher\ folder. If the service is set to Manual, it is not Started and
the system tray program access is not available. It can be Run on demand. If the Avira item was uninstalled,
that folder would be deleted.

The documentation refers to certain popups as Alerts, but in the current version of Avira Free,
15.0.12.420, they are labeled Warnings.
Select Real Time Protection in the left panel, then Configuration on the right. Then General on the left to get to the Warnings section.

Other than that, you can try adding the file C:\Program Files (x86)\Avira\AntiVir Desktop\avnotify.exe
to the Avira Quarantine. It can easily be removed from quarantine later and this does not corrupt the installation.

edit: C:\Program Files (x86) is only on Windows 64-bit

 

Avira did finally produce an unexpected popup.
I have quarantined avnotify.exe. Too soon to tell if that will be effective.
To quarantine that file, it's necessary to temporarily Disable Protect Protection.
After the quarantine, enable protection again. The program prompts that a system restart is necessary to reactivate protection.

 

That's PRODUCT Protection ... duh :-o

So far it's working fine. The update popups still work as intended.
Haven't noticed any ill effects.

 

I want to report this so that no one will waste time and effort with this method.

The avnotify.exe quarantine does not stop the popup advertisements.
I also tried moving both avnotify.exe and avnotify.dll to another drive.
In both cases, the files are replaced during the automated update.

I'm trying a different method now. If that works, I'll post the results.