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General discussion

What is the result of missing an update?

Nov 18, 2003 1:48AM PST

What if I do update 1, miss update 2 and then install update 3---have I lost anything?

Running free AVG, but the question is generic as applies to all A/V programs.

Discussion is locked

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Re:What is the result of missing an update?
Nov 18, 2003 2:33AM PST
What if I do update 1, miss update 2 and then install update 3---have I lost anything?
AFAIK, None. As long as we will install the latest file, it should be ok. It will add missing updates or replace the old updates (Depending on AV product).

Good to allow auto-download & auto-install for protection software. Will not miss a thing (unless there is a server or network issue)
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Generic is a broad term....
Nov 18, 2003 2:40AM PST

Using AVG version 6 as an example...

There are two styles of updates out there and AVG has used both. The old way was to download all virus defs and possibly program changes and replace entire files. If you did the manual update, the bin file also contained all program changes so an old copy of the install program and the latest bin file were all you needed to get an up-to-date AV.

The new way is to have a differential file which adds virus defs to the existing files. From the behavior I've seen so far, the differential file is all virus defs since a certain date (update #516). If you skip a file, you still get the virus defs in the next differential file. However, when you're talking about a month or even a year of virus defs, it is still a lot smaller than the full virus def file. At some point, they will make another starting point for the differential file (e.g. when there are program changes as you will have a large download anyway).

If they used an incremental file system (only the virus defs since the last update), then you would need to apply all update files in order to keep in sync. I don't think that is happening with AVG.

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Re:Generic is a broad term....
Nov 18, 2003 5:02AM PST

Your hypothesis tested---
My desktop downloaded some 60Kb to upgrade AVG this morning while an old Win95 machine that has been sitting under my workbench for several weeks required a D/L of 1.8Mb.

Thanks for the information---

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And if you check...
Nov 18, 2003 10:58PM PST
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_updt6.php?lng=fe

Once you have performed update 516, download and install the most recent differential update. If your program is already at version 516 or higher, download the most recent differential update here.

You will see 3 sets of updates to get AVG free to version 542 - 2145350 bytes for version 516+, 1877828 bytes for version 529+ and 48622 bytes for version 540+. It looks like they have differential starting points at version 516, 529 and 540. #516 implemented program changes for using differential files. I suspect #529 and #540 added program changes or removed some virus defs (or both).
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[NT] - I understand now--thanks again
Nov 19, 2003 12:33AM PST

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