On October 17,  I have received the invitation for the event: Win8 BugHunt. As the only lady invited to this event I felt really flattered. However I had no clue what is this event actually about … So I did my “InfoHunt” and this is what I have discovered:

Instead of running a “boring” test on a compatibility between avast! Antivirus and Microsoft® Windows® 8 operating system, Lukáš Hasík (director of QA team*) along with Michal Vaněk (Senior Quality Assurance Engineer) decided to organize a competition.  They invited, exclusively selected, eleven AVAST employees to the internal test called Win8 BugHunt. The goal of a test was simple: find as much bugs as possible in the shortest period.

All eleven participants had to install the latest version of Windows® 8 OS and start testing the latest internal built of avast! Free Antivirus. Each participant was given two hours to pass 10 assignments. The idea was to follow a “regular avast! user experience”. I myself decided to participate as a neutral watcher and follow others struggling with their ten tasks, which were following:

1. Provide a custom installation of avast! Free Antivirus in a trial mode
2. Install selected browser (Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari)
3. Test a functionality of a Browser protection: WebRep, SiteCorrect, Phishing
4. Test Remote Assistance feature

1. Try and test Scan feature
2. Customize your avast! Antivirus
3. Test functionality of different avast! Shields
4. Insert a License into avast!
5. Run Safezone/Sandbox
6. Uninstall

For two hours two rooms were occupied by 11 male, driven by their ego, competing who will be the winner! Test was considered as very successful and 10 bugs were discovered and fixed.

Now we are pleased to announce official list of winners of Win8 BugHunt. They were awarded in a following categories:

• David Jursa awarded as The Best Bugbuster -  for discovering the biggest number of bugs
• Sergej Nikonuk awarded as The Most Creative Bugbuster – for discovering that avast! detected itself as a virus (no worries, it was already fixed
• Sergej Nikonuk awarded also The Toughest Bughbuster – for discovering a black screen, that appeared during installation without any dump file creation

Perhaps in a feature, considering a great opportunities that social media and its technologies offering (such as Hangouts on Goolge+), we will be able to organize BugHunting with a participation of our Community members. Who knows maybe you can be a next the next AVAST Bugbuster?

*QA stands for Quality Assurance– this department is responsible for testing new avast! products before their releases.

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