New AVG build

[GreyHaired]

http://free.grisoft.com/ww.download-avg-an...us-free-edition

not that new, released April 24th

[Rocky]

<----- *still* a big fan of AVG free.

[Giampi]

I once was a fan of AVG, now I prefer Avira on my XP partition

[GreyHaired]

This is a good site about AV programs:

http://www.virus.gr/portal/en/

As we all know, we can avoid a lot of trouble just by being careful.

Apart from that I always do a clean install every 8-9 months; not because of virus or malware, just a "seasonal cleaning"

[Tinker]

AVG and Zone Alarm, is peace of mind, if used right.

[Rocky]

V8 installs a toolbar.

How to install AVG without LinkScanner

If you wish to install AVG 8.0 Free Edition without the LinkScanner component, or uninstall this component from your program, please proceed as follows:

* Download the AVG 8.0 Free Edition installation package from our website.

* Run the installation with the parameters /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch. One way to achieve this is to:

o save the AVG Free installation file directly to disk C:\

o open menu Start -> Run

o type

c:\avg_free_stf_*.exe /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSurf /REMOVE_FEATURE fea_AVG_SafeSearch

* The installation will be started, and AVG will be installed without the LinkScanner component.

source

[GreyHaired]

If you need to install it on other PCs or re-install at some stage, use the "customized" option.

At step 4 or 5 you can uncheck the toolbar installation.

[Rocky]

Yeh I just saw that, unfortunately I managed a botch upgrade and can't get AVG to install at all now. It freezes at "copying setup.cfg" every time, and only a complete system restart gets my PC going again.

The annoying thing is that the Grisoft Tech support forms all require the licence number to be entered, but I can't even get AVG started so cannot complete the form, or even, get this, register on their forums LOL!

So I sent in the fault via a sales contact form and hope they pass it on. Until then, I'll need to use another free one - and Avira AntiVir Personal seems to be rated highly so I'm installing it now.

[GreyHaired]

That sounds like an AVG software conflict. If you want to give AVG another try, you can give it a shot with system restore but better is to remove any AVG files via Control Panel/uninstall or use the "Remove programs" option of "Ccleaner" ( http://www.ccleaner.com ) Then let Ccleaner clean your registry for any leftovers and remove the ..../Program files/AVG folder manually. Then reinstall.

[Rocky]

Yeh I did cc cleaner and Add/Remove a few times, still no joy. I really didn't fancy doing a system restore just for AV, so I will try out Avira for a while. Avira score higher for AV detection in a recent test anyway,

[CR6]

If you need to install it on other PCs or re-install at some stage, use the "customized" option.

At step 4 or 5 you can uncheck the toolbar installation.

Yup, that's what I did on 2 systems so far and no unwanted toolbar

Have you guys noticed that AVG 8 scans all the links in a Google search result webpage and tells you if the link is safe? I wonder how it manages to incorporate that into the webpages source code.

[Rocky]

Have you guys noticed that AVG 8 scans all the links in a Google search result webpage and tells you if the link is safe? I wonder how it manages to incorporate that into the webpages source code.

I'm not sure if that's a feature I really need. I'm pretty sure I have never caught a virus from a webpage, so long as security updates are applied and browsers are up to date, it'd be pretty hard for anyone who was "net savvy" to catch a virus from a malicious site.

If AVG is loading each search result in the background to check content, that sounds like a bit of a bandwidth overhead. It'd be interesting to watch net traffic while it does that, just to see.

[ROCO*AFZ*]

Here is a question that is partially on topic. Has anyone tried windows live one care? Granted not free but does have a 90 day trial. I have a few customers using it, especially with vista and it seems good but in my testing lol i had no infection come through. It protects up to 3 pc's for 39-49.00 a year, and made by MS. Just curious. It's hard for me to recommend it though unless i see it work. (it also adds help for home users for sharing printers, one place backup and one computer can manage all 3)

As for AVG, it the past, the free edition has not worked well. I have had to use other programs to clean things as simple as aol trojans that it let slide by.

[CR6]

Here is a question that is partially on topic. Has anyone tried windows live one care? Granted not free but does have a 90 day trial. I have a few customers using it, especially with vista and it seems good but in my testing lol i had no infection come through. It protects up to 3 pc's for 39-49.00 a year, and made by MS. Just curious. It's hard for me to recommend it though unless i see it work. (it also adds help for home users for sharing printers, one place backup and one computer can manage all 3)

I can answer your question. Last year, I installed OneCare v1.5 on both my home network (with XP and Vista) and a charitable organization's network (XP only) which I maintain. I also installed it on 2 friend's home systems.

I previously had been using MacAfee but with v10 they started to sell VirusScan as a "suite" with other components which I really didn't want. I thought the benefits of OneCare would be that it's made by MS so it should run well with XP (haha, should have known better than to trust anything by MS). I even stuck it out until it upgraded to v2.0 earlier this year.

After one year of using it, I have decided not to use it anymore or recommend it to anyone. Why?

- Once you install it, you cannot turn it off unless you uninstall the program. With MacAfee, I occasionally wanted to turn off the VirusScan if it was conflicting with another program etc, and I had that option, but with OneCare you can't

- They actually made it TOO simple, and not as configurable as other anti-Virus programs. If it gave a "warning" it often wasn't specific enough what exactly the problem was. It just gave you a button to click to "fix the problem" and sometimes that didn't work.

- Another frustrating thing was after a major update, it would reset the printer sharing properties, and the staff would complain they couldn't print from the network printer. It was an easy fix if you knew to reset the printer sharing option in OneCare, but it was dumb that OneCare didn't keep the previous settings before it updated.

- For some reason, when you install OneCare, it has it's own anti-spyware and automatically disables Windows Defender that is in Vista. I thought this was wierd as they are both MS products. Why wouldn't MS just keep Defender as part of OneCare??? Boggles my mind, but I figure it must be 2 different dev teams

- It does have a neat feature where you can set one system as the "hub" PC which monitors 2 other PCs (make sure they have been updated etc), but with 6 systems in the network I maintain, I wish one 1 hub PC could monitor the other 5. Instead, I have to have 2 hub PCs.

- There is a backup feature that has potential (back up computers over a network) but there is no config options to specify if it will totally overwrite the previous backup or make a whole new file (like the Mac's TimeMachine), so I haven't bothered using it.

- Last spring the secretary downloaded some program to save Youtube videos, and got a trojan that infected a total of 3 computers on the network (passed around through a USB drive actually). OneCare was NOT able to delete it or contain it. Neither did AVG. MacAfee could only contain it. In the end, I ran 2 other anti-virus programs (Kaspersky and NOD32) that did successfully delete it. (Eventually reformatted all the PCs after disinfecting all the HDs)

So those are a few comments off the top of my head. I would say if someone is a "low-risk" user - i.e. doesn't tend to surf/download any dangerous sites/material, then OneCare may be adequate. But if it's a computer that tends to get heavy use by people who may download dangerous stuff, then better stick to a more mature security suite.

[Rocky]

Just to close my little chapter above - I finally got AVG8 installed tonight. Up until now I could neither install not uninstall, it froze either way. Through the AVG forums however I was advised to try in safe mode - and that did the trick. Uninstalled it in safe mode, rebooted and installed it.

[Giampi]

Slightly off topic...

Since I switched completely to Ubuntu no more antivirus and antispyware for me

[Rocky]

Just to close my little chapter above - I finally got AVG8 installed tonight. Up until now I could neither install not uninstall, it froze either way. Through the AVG forums however I was advised to try in safe mode - and that did the trick. Uninstalled it in safe mode, rebooted and installed it.

Nothing's ever that simple - ever since I did a safe boot to resolve the above, it appears my system Event Viewer has stopped logging events.

[WytchDokta]

It seems to me that v8 doesn't update itself as much as the previous versions did. And before you ask, yes I DO have auto-update turned on.

Eight times out of ten when I manually click on Update Now, it comes back saying 'no new update files found'

Also, AVG doesn't like instant messengers of sorts. I found out the hard way. If you enable Instant Messaging Protection in the Web Shield then try and use MSN Messenger, it will keep returing some error upon start-up of Messenger. It says there's a problem with the service, but if you check the Messenger service status it says it's working fine. It kept doing that to me, and wouldn't let me log in MSN Messenger for about four days (I got round it by using the standard Windows Live Messenger. I looked it up on Google and it turns out that AVG Web Shield was cauing the problem. So I disabled the Instant Messenger Protection in the Web Shield and the MSN Messenger log-in problems stopped instantly. Too much of a coincidence? You decide.

Edited August 5, 2008 by WytchDokta