Avira International Partner Summit, Germany - September 2010

I was fortunate enough to be attend the 2nd Avira International Partner Summit, which was held in Germany last week.

There were partners from 35 different countries, so it was great to meet and chat with members of the extended Avira family.

Avira were a great host, not only offering information regarding growth and expansion of the previous year, new developments and structure changes, but also offering a listening ear with the issues and challenges faced by the various distributors and our reseller partners.

There were a number of useful workshops to allow us to voice our challenges in a commercial, marketing and technical environment, but also share ideas and solutions in these areas, and I was amazed at the parity despite the diverse audience.

There are many exciting things that will be announced and released from Avira in due course, and I will keep you up to date when I can!

Is your anti-virus software doing it's job?

AV-Comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/) have been reviewing and comparing anti-virus software packages for a number of years. 

The latest reports are available from this section of their site: http://www.av-comparatives.org/comparativesreviews/main-tests

The comparisons between these products are independent and are based on the findings, which are reported.

I know people find it a big upheaval to change your anti-virus provider, especially in larger organisations, but the results offer a very compelling argument to switch to Avira!

Does IAG work with Windows 7 (64 bit)?

After much experimenting with Windows 7 32 bit, you can see you are able to get Microsoft IAG to work with it, as can be been in one of my previous blog posts.

Now I hope we are all aware that 64-bit Windows operating systems are not supported by IAG. I know there were rumours of 64-bit support being released with IAG SP 2 Update 2, but that is not the case. We will discuss this update is a later blog posting.

Well I was fortunate enough to be provided with a new work laptop, which has a faster processor, bigger hard disk and more importantly 4GB RAM. I did initially install Windows 7 Enterprise 32-bit, but was disappointed to only see that 3GB was recognised by the OS (I would have lived with only 3.25-3.5GB being seen), so I bit the bullet and installed Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit so that all the RAM is seen and can be used.

I know that Windows 7 64-bit will allow you to install applications as either 32 or 64 bit, so some things like Java should be installed twice to work with both 32 and 64-bit IE browsers, will specific 32 bit applications an be installed and used. That said, despite the workaround detailed for Windows 7 32 bit, this does not work in Windows 7 64 bit!

Luckily, Microsoft have a Windows XP Mode as a solution: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

By installing Windows Virtual PC RC and Windows XP Mode RC, it will allow you to run a virtualised version of XP on your Windows 7 desktop. There are not additional licenses to consider, but you will need a processor with either Intel® Virtualization Technology or AMD-V™ feature turned on. I downloaded this application from the Intel website to check that my processor supported this feature from here: http://www.intel.com/support/processors/tools/piu/

I found these step by step instructions on Windows 7 XP Mode, which I found very useful: http://lifehacker.com/5245396/set-up-and-use-xp-mode-in-windows-7

Once installed and working, I also installed Avira Premium Security Suite software to remove the Microsoft Security Centre red shield.

I created a shortcut into the all users folder of the virtualised desktop, to my IAG website. This also placed the shortcut into the start menu of my Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit. By clicking the link, it will start up an IE browser to my IAG appliance from the XP virtual environment, which gives a pretty seamless experience and I retain full IAG functionality.... phew!!!

Avira and IAG

The last few days I've been speaking to a reseller who purchased Avira AntiVir Professional Anti Virus software from e92plus.

They were having issues connecting their PC to an IAG solution! For some reason, since the AV change from McAfee to Avira, they were unable to access an IAG solution. The IAG solution was not deployed or implemented by e92plus, so it was just fortunate that I work with both products.

My initial reaction to the description of the problem, was that the IAG solution was not up to date, and lacked IAG SP2, which would give WMI recognition which works with all versions of Avira. Prior to SP2, IAG would only recognise Avira V6 or V7. The reseller checked with the IAG supplier and it turns out that SP2 is already installed.

My colleague tried to access the site from an XP machine running Avira 8, and was able to access it. The reseller had installed the latest version of Avira Professional which is version 9, and the assumption was that was the problem. I tried to access the site from an Vista machine running Avira 9, and again I was able to access the site!

With a bit more digging, it turns out that the endpoints must meet three criteria before they are able to login.

1. Must have an anti-virus application running
2. Must have a software firewall running
3. Must have the IAG components installed and running

So at e92plus we also use an IAG appliance, which would explain why we were able to access the site. This would mean that our machines meet the above requirements as all these components were installed.

Checking with the reseller, we highlighted that without the IAG components installed, it would not work. These components will require adminsitrative rights to install. Despite their frustration, I was not able to help from an IAG perspective, but pointed them in the right direction, as the offline installation package may be required due to a corrupted installation, or not having adminstrative rights when the initial installation was run.

They were able to access the site from both Vista and XP machines with Avira version 9, as well as e92plus proving that we were able to access from Vista and XP machines with both Avira version 8 and 9.

The issue that the reseller now has is that on site, it will not work with their client's machines, and the finger was pointed at Avira.

I can catergorically say, I don't believe the issue to lie with Avira, as we were able to prove from a number of machines that it works. Despite this, it was requested that we escalate this with Avira, and they also see no issue with their product!!

Although I understand our resellers frustration, the troubleshooting needs to be with the IAG side or the client installation, rather than the AV! The troubleshooting should start with the log files from the IAG server, but as the supplier of the IAG solution seems reluctant to help our reseller, so they are stuck between a rock and hard place!!