AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition 8.0.1 Reliability

This post was written by admin on May 27, 2008
Posted Under: Antivirus,PC Security,Technology

I have been assured by Grisoft, the vendors of AVG that V8 WILL install and function on XP Pro and all versions of Vista, but will not install on servers.

I quote the comment posted on behalf of Grisoft:
"The information about AVG8 Free not running on XP Pro is NOT correct. XP Pro _is_ supported. AVG Free edition does not install on servers but it can be installed on any Home or Pro version of Windows (including Vista Ultimate).Also, a new major program update is being prepared that should solve most of the issues mentioned here (and in other forums). By the time this update is released (around mid June), you may also want to test the public beta version of this update (http://beta.avg.com)"

There are many problems appearing with AVG AntiVirus Free Edition V8.0.1 which are causing problems for many users, with updating, scanning and more.

Problems known are as follows:

AVG will NOT run on XP Pro. Grisoft have put a 'stop' code in the Free version so that it can only be used for non-commercial use and it has been considered that XP pro is for commercial use although many XP Pro users are home users.

Some users experience problems using this on FAT systems, the alternative is to switch to NTFS.

If you don’t have Service Pack 2 or the more recent SP3 or either is corrupted, AVG will not function properly.

You can download SP2 by clicking here or SP3 from Windows Update.

If the problem is related to SP3 then uninstall the Service Pack and reinstall SP2 until such time as SP3 has overcome its glitches and gremlins.

Some users are experiencing problems conflicting with ZoneAlarm Firewall.
Ensure that if you are using ZoneAlarm that it is properly configured.

An alternative is to use a different firewall such as Online Armor Free Firewall which is highly rated and a very powerful firewall program to run on Windows 2000/XP/2003 Server or PC Tools Firewall Plus Free Edition which is a powerful free personal firewall for Windows and designed to work on Designed for Windows Vista™ 32-bit, XP, 2000 and Server 2003.

Running Windows Defender at the same time as AVG, shutdown Windows Defender.

Conflicts with Spybot Search & Destroy, remove Spybot prior to installing AVG v8 and reinstall after installation.

Older versions of AVG, including antivirus, antispyware and rootkit.

The latest version will uninstall v7.5, but you must manually check to ensure that it is completely removed. Use the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs option to uninstall any other AVG products. Then open My Computer and double click the C drive, open Program files and open the AVG folder that no other versions of AVG are lurking there, if they are simply delete them.

You will also need to clean your Registry which will have traces of AVG’s older programs left in there. Use a program such as Eusing Registry Cleaner to remove invalid or corrupt entries from the Registry.

Do NOT run any form of P2P software while a scan is in process, nor have the Windows Update running. Simply close any P2P applications and in Task Manager kill the wuauclt.exe process.

If you have any other form of AntiVirus or AntiSpyware on your computer, AVG will conflict with it and it will be necessary to remove them.

When updating the Virus Definitions database you may experience problems if you have other programs running or browsers open.

When AVG V8 is installed ensure that you untick ‘Scan infectable files only’ by opening the AVG interface, selecting Tools, then expand Scans by clicking on the +, click Scan whole computer and UNTICK ‘Scan infectable files only’, also apply this to Shell extension scan and Scan specific files or folders.

Another issue is the length of the scan process. Initially I scanned my computer in less than 2 hours, but within a few days the time was increasing and now it is 3 hours on a 180GB hard drive with 15GB used, 1.5GB RAM and a Pentium D 3.00GHz processor.

Other options are of course to use an alternative AntiVirus which I will list here and post about a little later.

Avast Home Edition for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/Vista
More details on Avast here

ClamWin Antivirus 0.88 for Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
Download ClamWin AntiVirus here.

PC Tools AntiVirus Free Edition 4.0 for Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Download PCTools AntiVirus here