AVG Free Users Beware

[Ricamundo]

After booting up this morning, and doing my usual updating of AVG free(v9.0) and malwarebytes, i was reading the sports page when a message from AVG popped into my tray telling me that the new AVG 2011 free version was available, with improvements to this and that, blah blah, so i proceeded to  D/L and install it, scanning it for any threats while it sat on my desktop.

No issues, so i proceeded with the install. It seemed to install ok, until a window popped up asking me for my full name and email so they could send me product info, etc. Riiiight.. i left all boxes blank, i unchecked the "send me product info box, and clicked finish, then everything froze.

i had to turn off the PC power and after rebooting the hard way, i tried to uninstall the damned thing using add/remove, and it froze again. :D after another reboot, i tried a sys restore to yesterday, and got a BSOD near the end of the restore process. :D

Anyway, after yet another reboot, the restore worked and i saw that AVG 2011 was gone, but the old version was still there, although it was inactive, so i decided to try Kaspersky AV, which it turns out doesnt have a free version, but only a 30 day trial, or the full version. ::)

The trial version is up and running now, so at least i have full protection temporarily. I visited the AVG Forums, and noticed that mnay others who tried the new 2011 version had the same problems, so hopefully a fix will be forthcoming. Meanwhile ill use Kaspersky until the tial ends.



Can anyone recommend a free AV that works well and is effective and not Avast, as ive already tried it and it has a conflict with my email. I can recive but not send.

[JRD]

(...) it has a conflict with my email. I can recive but not send.

Great... it protect others from receiving viruses from you but doesn't protect you from getting viruses from others!   :D

Sorry mate, but I too use AVG and can't recommend any other free AV. But thanks for the headsup about the 2011 version, I'll keep my eyes peeled for any incoming update message!  :-X

[Art Blade]

crazy stuff  ????

I've never used free AV software.

[Ricamundo]

I.ve had no issues with AVG v9.0, although i seem to remember problems with v8.0 when it first came out a few years ago. :-\ I think the lesson ive learned is dont install the new version until its been out for a while and they stop updating the old version.

[Art Blade]

I think the lesson I'd have learned from that would have been "this new version was screwed up" but I wouldn't stop using newest AV products. Especially AV products are designed to cope with the ever developing malware, so using an older version isn't exactly recommendable. But indeed, what you experienced shouldn't have happened.

[Ricamundo]

I agree. You'd think the devs would have called it a beta and cautioned users that it might not quite be ready for prime time. Now ive got this kapersky running, and so far it seems more like a net nanny than an AV running in the background. ::)

It keeps popping up to tell me that it is allowing my program to start or my chosen webpage to load, and when i shut off auto updates, it didnt like that, but with auto updates on it damn well updates every few hours. I like to update everything first thing when i boot up in the morning. ::)

I wish software designers would use the KISS method.

[mandru]

I agree. You'd think the devs would have called it a beta and cautioned users that it might not quite be ready for prime time.

On closer examination you'd think the devs would have called it a beta and made it available on their website as a beta instead of initiating User's pop-ups to make it appear that it was hot and ready to go.  Quality service is  the name of the game.

Their handling of the distribution for an updated product this way is worthy of being called a major fail.   \:/

[Art Blade]

nice use of that "smiley" at the end of your post, mandru  ^-^

***

The auto-update is actually a good thing and a landmark of good AV programs. It shows that the developer refresh their signatures every couple of hours so the user should be protected from new dangers as soon as they are known. If you don't update with latest signatures, you might as well switch it off entirely.

However, there is no such thing as a complete protection. Various AV programs have various issues, none of them is capable of protecting you on their own, and unfortunately you can't run 40+ AV programs on a single computer. If you want to use it for anything else, that is.

So the best thing to do is actually THINK about what you do, like don't download every crap and don't install everything and don't click on random links and so on. If you're halfway cautious, you can survive pretty well on the net even without any AV program.

By the way, don't forget about the virustotal.com addy so you can upload any file you want to know if it's safe, that site runs indeed 40+ AV scanners and you can be pretty sure if none of those finds anything that the file is indeed safe and execute it.

[Ricamundo]

Well, all this drama was with a so called safe file, but holy crap, in order to straighten out things, and get rid of AVG 2011 from my PC i had no end of trouble. It seems that buggy software is almost as much aggro as a virus. :D

[Art Blade]

AV software tends to dig in deeeeeep into the system, even their own uninstaller often won't completely remove them. Which is even more fun when you want to install a different brand that starts to interfere with remnants of old AV software. Now that  calls for a fresh OS install..  ;)

[fragger]

Sorry to hear about your AV woes, Rica. I'm running Kaspersky AV as well as it originally came with the PC (which was the first store-bought PC I ever owned, I always built my own previously). As Art said, regular AV updating is a good thing for the reasons he stated, but like you I switched Auto Updates off as I got sick to death of waiting for it to spend five minutes or so updating itself every time I got on the net. Now I manually update it once every few days or so. A tad risky maybe, but I'm very careful about where I go online. I agree, Kaspersky is somewhat nannyish. For instance, whenever I want to load Photoshop for the first time in a session, I have to switch Kaspersky off before loading PS, otherwise it takes a couple of minutes. The reason appears to be that when PS loads its Type Engine, Kaspersky takes it upon itself to scan and vet every single font file that PS looks at during its load (and I have a lot of fonts). If Kaspersky is off, PS loads in a few seconds. Once PS is loaded, I can turn the AV back on as PS leaves the core of itself in memory once loaded, including the Type Engine, so I don't have to do the AV shuffle again to open PS subsequently in the same session.

Kaspersky seems to do its job, but it's intrusive, hardly transparent, of course it's not free. Once my license on it runs out, I'll be looking at alternatives.

[Ricamundo]

I updated Kapersky this morning and its sooo slow, considering it said it was already up to date. ::) But anything to avoid a game session crashing or minimizing to DT so something can update. ::)

I too will soon look for another AV as i wont be paying to keep this one. I might go back to AVG v9.0 as it worked really well, and wasnt intrusive or annoying. I cant use Avast, and Avira is really basic in free form, and i dont think it even scans email. :-\

On the mshta issue, im really hesitant about a win repair or even worse a completely new install. Firstly, the MS dude ive been dealing with via email said i have to enter the bios and change the auto boot setting to cd rom as opposed to hard disk, then run the repair, and i might have to reactivate windows by phone. Cripes! it sounds like a pain in the arse for the fairly minor irritant of clearing out these mshta\s every few hours, and there's no guarantee the repair would even correct it anyway. :( He said i would have to re-update windows from bare bones to my current sp3 and all the security updates as well.   >:((

I still would like to try a clean mshta.exe, if someone could post a copy of one for me. Thanks in advance. :)

[Art Blade]

I still would like to try a clean mshta.exe, if someone could post a copy of one for me. Thanks in advance. :)

http://openworldgames.org/owg/forums/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=147

I had it scanned through virustotal.com first, clean. :)