avast! Antivirus and Windows x64 Edition

The new 64-bit Windows platform brings increased productivity and dependability as well as many security enhancements. Nonetheless, the risk of malware infection on this platform is still relatively high. Effective protection is a must.

We are glad to announce that all avast! antivirus editions, including the free Home Edition, now fully support the new Windows x64 platform (avast! Server Edition supports both x64 and IA64 (Intel Itanium) platforms).

ALWIL Software is anticipating massive start of this platform as Windows XP x64 Edition supports up to 32 GB of RAM and 16 TB of virtual memory, enabling applications to run faster when working with large data sets. Applications can preload substantially more data into virtual memory, allowing rapid access by the 64-bit extensions of the processor. This reduces the time for loading data into virtual memory or seeking, reading, and writing to data storage devices, making applications run faster and more efficiently.

Traditional (32-bit) antivirus applications are unable to operate correctly on the 64-bit Windows platform because they rely on 32-bit kernel-mode drivers. The new avast! antivirus uses native 64-bit drivers, delivering the same level of protection as in the 32-bit Windows environments. The installation package is the same for 32-bit and 64-bit versions - the setup program automatically detects the operating system it is running on and installs all necessary files.

Under Windows x64 Edition, avast! antivirus works in so called "hybrid mode". This means that some of its part are 32-bit and some are 64-bit (most notably, the kernel-mode device drivers and some helper DLL's). This allows avast! transparently detect both 32-bit and 64-bit threats

To see the list of our antivirus products, please refer to the Products page.