Have patience - it almost over. Things will be fine soon. From Avira TechBlog:
Another huge Update leading to delays
September 30, 2009, 7:51 am We are currently delivering another huge update to our clients. This leads to the situation that users of the free Avira AntiVir Personal have some issues getting their updates fast.
The situation should get better today or tomorrow. We hope that we have our improved, faster system up and running for the next big update so that this situation won?t come up again!
Please be patient ? the update will be over soon! By the way, as usual, users of Avira AntiVir Premium, Avira Premium Security Suite and the Professional products are not affected ? they have dedicated download servers and reserved bandwidth available.
No, Avira's folks are not playing tricks on you. The freeware is given to us under the condition that we understand that the paying customers have first priority. Once or twice a year this happens. It always occurs when Avira is rolling out major updates to the premium subscribers. It's not a sales tactic. And the phenomenon is actually widely accepted. After all - it is freeware.
When I used Avira I usually managed to get the update through by just keep clicking the "Start update" link in Avira's GUI. I had Avira open - waiting in the Taskbar. Up and down, up and down, trying and trying. Always came through after a while. As I said: it only once a year or so.
Try again. Europe and the US is sleeping. Less run on the servers now. Click "Start update" - give it a go...
Then just keep clicking the "Start update" link inside Avira's GUI - the link is sitting on Avira's front page. Do it every 10 minutes. It will update eventually. And take it easy...
I wouldn't say it is just once a year this happens.
On the 3rd, 17th and the 29th of this month, bigger than usual updates have resulted in paralyzing the servers for avira free users.
Of course they would prefer if people paid for the avira program. If everyone did that would there still be slowdowns I wonder?
As epost says choosing your update time can be crucial. I update manually ( I don't have auto updates on) first thing in the morning when I go online, but when there is a big update sometimes even this doesn't work and I just leave it in the taskbar and hope.
Weekends they don't do any updates, so you can be without up to date protection for 2 days a week.
However I like avira, it has served me well detection wise, and I shall be sticking with it on this computer for now.
i wonder if avast do the same with the free version.
Not that I know of. I've never had an update issue with Avast, although if a server is busy it just switches to another available one rather fast. However on most days it beats me to checking for an update since it checks every four hours.
Mine aso went about 3 days but I decided to do a manual update -
The download included many large files so it took quite a while to load - As said above there are a few times a year this occurs so either be patient or do it manually - With millions of free users it should be regarded as a large advantage to users that we get such good service - As epost said -
Many other companies with that many free users would not be able to handle constant, delivered, updates - We do usually them manually -