Avira free not updating

Anyone else having that problem? For the past 36 hours it will not update.

Is there some way to d/l the update files?

http://www1.avira.com/en/support/vdf_update.html

Download the "IVDF (Unicode)".
Then do a "Manual Update" in Avira to the downloaded file.

This is strange. When I tried to d/l the IVDF, when it hit 99% it said it
cannot complete. Either disk full (which it isn't) or it is in use by
another program.

I tried that twice with the same result.

I then tried to d/l to a flash drive. That worked and I was able to manually
update Avira.

However, if I try again and update Avira (automatically) it still doesn't
work. As before, nothing happens. It does not find any files to update.
I have 2 other computers in the house and I have the same problem.

Is this likely a problem on the Avira site?

Avira posted this on there forum...

"Dear AntiVir users,

a bigger update was released yesterday.

Because of nearly 100 millions FreeAV users our update servers are under
high utilization.
Please try the AntiVir update at another time again.

We thank you for your understanding."

Today several of my (scheduled) updates took more than three quarter of
an hour to complete.

If one can get around or solve the issue of trust, Softpedia has the
zipped updates

It's always going to be >28MB, but the zipped file doesn't need to be
unzipped.

Avira has had a history of overly busy update servers for those that are
available to the free version of that product. The default is to
perform one update check per day, so if the servers are busy it could be
several days before you get an update. I remember it sometimes taking 3
days before I got an update. You need to define scheduled jobs that
check for the updates more often than just once per day. Pick oddball
times of the day to help ensure you get an update.

As I recall (I don't use Avira anymore), and as an example, you would
need to define 4 update jobs if you wanted a 6-hour check interval every
day. Pick times like 4:47AM, 10:53PM, 4:38PM, and 10:42AM. Try to poll
at different minute marks on the clock than are typically used by most
users who tend to use the 10- and 15-minute marks, 5 minutes before or
after the hour or half-hour marks, on the hour marks, and often inside
the first half of the hour. Pick times when there may be less load on
their free-version servers.

Why are the manual updates so large? Everytime I download an update
manually, it's always very large. It has happened three times this
month already. When the auto is working, the updates are always very
small in the kb's not MB's. Being still on dialup makes this a pain
the a.

Well, this is gETTING Annoying. I still can't do automatic updates!

I've been following this thread for a couple of days. I've been up at 1 AM
every night and notice the update doing its thing without a problem. The
only time I've ever had problems with it is when I was doing a new install.
A couple of times it couldn't get the updates right away, but before the
day was over I got them OK.

The update file satisfies all Avira applications with engines that use
virus fingerprint/signature files. Symantec & Norton also use a huge
file for manual updates. I suspect more than a few of the other AV
applications do also.

Think of all the anti-virus definitions placed in a big
slowly expanding pyramid-formed container sliced horizontally
into 4 sections [AntiVir0.vdf],[AntiVir1.vdf],[AntiVir2.vdf] and
[AntiVir3.vdf] more or less equal in height but very different in
volume (the number of definitions there is room for). (Look at
the dates and sizes of these files on your computer from time to
time.)

[AntiVir0.vdf] is at the bottom an seldom changes,
[AntiVir3.vdf] is at the top and it's to this file the newest
definitions are added so it will grow from update to update for a
while and is the only thing you get with an automatic update each
and every time. After it reaches a certain size, the cutoff
between [AntiVir3.vdf] and the slice below it [AntiVir2.vdf]
changes and people doing automatic updates will get both files in
the update with [AntiVir3.vdf] again very small. Even more seldom
a restructure is done so automatic updaters will receive all 3
top slices and it is even more infrequent that [AntiVir0.vdf]
needs to be changed.

In the manually downloaded updates you get get everything
each time, including [AntiVir0.vdf] the very big base of the
pyramid. Included are also the latest version of the
search-engine and other files that are only updated once in a while.

( I know that a few years back 'AVG Anti-Virus' was
similarly structured and let you download just the /slices/ that
you actually needed. It sure would be a desirable feature for
manual updaters on dialup. )

It could be that most updates are incremental updates and when someone
needs a manual update it is assumed they may have missed several
incremental updates.

Not so. This happens everytime an update is larger than normal and
there servers become overloaded (free version users only). Their forum
is loaded with update related problems.

[Adam03]

There is little point me using this software if it isn't going to keep itself updated. Why the heck haven't Avira come on here and tell people what's going on. I won't be using their program much longer at this rate.

I haven't seen any problems. Admittedly, I was away for three days. Last
night I turned this system on. Windows told me that my antivirus was out
of date, then Avira said it needed to update, so I let it happen. Then a
scan ran.

Everything's fine.

Feel free to stop using any one of the available AV programs any time
any one of them annoys you.

....in a week you will have tried them all. :o)