How To Make Active Virus Shield Obtain Updates
Active Virus Shield is an AOL rebranded Kaspersky anti virus. Recently AOL stopped offering the anti virus and starting September people who installed AVS can not obtain signature updates since AOL do not post them on their servers.
Since AVS is basically a Kaspersky anti virus you can make a simple hack that will make AVS to update the signature files from Kaspersky servers instead of the AOL server, thus keeping your anti virus program updated with the latest virus signatures.
All you need to do is update your HOSTS file. Follow these steps:
- Open your file explorer and navigate to: C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
- In the etc folder you’ll find a file named hosts. Edit this file in Notepad
- Add the following line to the bottom of the hosts file:
127.0.0.1 download.newaol.com- Save the hosts file and close Notepad
- Right click your Active Virus Shield tray icon and select Update in the menu
That is it. Now AVS will obtain the updates from Kaspersky server
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(4 votes)
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September 5th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Great tip!
September 5th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
1. shutdown Kaspersky ActiveVirusShield. Closing the main window is not enough, please click on the systray icon and exit.
2. locate the XML file listing the update servers. It’s usually located in directory C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\AVP6\Data and the name of the file is aol-updcfg.xml
3. edit that file and remove the two following lines
<site2 url=”ftp://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/” diff_url=”diffs” weight=”10000001″ region=”*” />
<site2 url=”http://download.newaol.com/avs/update/mirror/” diff_url=”diffs” weight=”10000000″ region=”*” />
4. save the file
5. restart ActiveVirusShield and launch an update from the systray icon’s contextual menu.
September 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Second Tip works only once, since update replaces aol-updcfg.xml with buggy version. So use the hosts-trick.
September 5th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
nice one
September 6th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
Don’t go fucking with your host file (Vista users won’t even be able to, it a protected system file). The other solution is better and much more elegant.
Also, it keeps working, in contrast to what “A fan to” says.
Yes, after editing aol-updcfg.xml and updating, it is replaced again with exactly the same version (not buggy), but update keeps working.
If in the future maybe update again doesn’t work, just delete the aol lines again and make the file read only, or change NTFS permissions to read only.
September 7th, 2007 at 7:02 am
how does redirecting all calls to download.aol.com back to my own machine help me keep avs updated? Just wondering…
September 7th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Once AVS sees that the server is not reachable it’ll try to connect to a different server, i.e Kaspersky servers
September 8th, 2007 at 4:44 am
Thanks for this.. worked straight away. The problem had been bugging me for weeks.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:31 am
Setting the file to read only doesnt work as well - but updates are being performed - in the log it encounters an error as it tries to reach aol, then it tries Kaspersky. Good enough. Only problem is that AVS application (program, not updates) will never be updated again (it is fine now, but eventually it will get obsolete) and we dont know for how long will Kaspersky kindly tolerate AVS users..?
more info http://www.glazman.org/weblog/dotclear/index.php?2007/09/04/3781-kaspersky-by-aol-discontinuied
January 8th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Seems like that moment arrived.
After 1st January 2008 the program is not orking anymore and asks to subscribe to the new McAfee version.
Any way to get around that?
January 9th, 2008 at 3:53 am
I’m not aware of any way to circumvent that
March 8th, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I still don’t get it…..
March 24th, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Does it work anymore? Anyone broke it?? thnx for ansver
March 26th, 2008 at 10:16 am
It does not work anymore. However AOL are giving away free Mcafee AV so you can use that instead
June 14th, 2008 at 4:55 am
thank you very much for this excellent advice. it worked : )
June 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am
thank you!