Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Help! AVG issue

For years, I've used AVG as my anti-virus program. And for years, it has worked quietly in the background, working without hassle.

Then, last week, when I booted up my pc, I got a message to update. I've updated plenty of times without any problems, but this time it was nothing but hassle, error codes, all kinds of weird stuff.

Finally, I got it installed. And it's been nothing but issues since. Especially, an error message which keeps popping up when I boot up.

So, finally, having had enough, I decided to uninstall and go with another AV program. And that's where the fun really started!

I first tried the uninstall on the program. AVG went through its process - as though it was installing, not uninstalling. At the end, it asked me to reboot. I did.

Then, I did a search for stray AVG files still on the system. And found 270+. I'm not sure WHAT files the uninstall was supposed to have taken out. None of them, far as I can tell! I still have the AVG icon on my status bar, too.

So, I tried deleting the files that showed up in my search. But it won't let me delete most of them.

Then, I tried add/remove program - and IT tells me it's ignored my request because AVG isn't on my system and hasn't been installed in the first place. Despite the fact that it's listed in the dang add/remove program list of programs.

So...help! I just want this stupid program off my system, so it quits sending me error messages (and, I suspect slowing down my pc, as I've had real issues with it being slow to do anything since I installed the update).

Any help in getting there will be appreciated!

LabRat

Man I'm glad I haven't done that update! Think I'll wait for the next one...

I don't know if it will help, but you might want to try launching the AVG installer and choose "Repair." Once it is repaired, you might be able to uninstall it via the Add/Remove Programs app in the Control Panel.

- Lynn

How about a system restore to before you updated.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone. I finally just reinstalled AVG - at least that gets me back to it just being annoying and flashing up error messages.

BTW, another irksome new addition to this updated version, it seems, is for it to refuse to install unless you uninstall 'conflicting programs' like ZoneAlarm and MS Security Essentials. I deeply resent this as AVG has run alongside ZA for years without any issues at all. And since I'm less than sure that AVG is working as it should, I'm not exactly inclined to remove either. I got around it by uninstalling MSSE and then installing it again once AVG was installed.

Lynn, where do I find 'repair'. I can't see that option anywhere and it's probably worth a try.

Sue, I'm always loathe to do a system restore in case I lose something else I might have changed in the same period that I don't want to lose. Not that I make many changes to my pc, so it would probably be fine, but it still freaks me out.

LabRat

Hi LabRat,

I had had that problem, too. What had happened with me was that I had installed the free edition of AVG 2011 a little while ago, and it worked fine until last night. Even though I have it set to update automatically, the tray icon indicated there was a problem; specifically, that my virus and spyware databases were out of date. When I tried to update them, it wouldn't let me. Long story short, I resolved the problem by downloading the installer again and when I launched it, that was when it asked me whether I wanted to "repair" AVG. Once AVG was repaired, everything was fine. At some point during the process, it told me that I needed to uninstall ZoneAlarm. Instead of uninstalling it, I just shut it down temporarily. Once AVG was properly installed, I restarted it. AVG seems perfectly content to run alongside ZoneAlarm now; the firewall just had to be shut down during the installation process.

I didn't like leaving my computer sans firewall or antivirus program for those few minutes, and I made sure to scan my computer immediately afterwards. I hope I won't have to repeat that process any time soon. Last night I was too tired to think clearly. If I were to do it again, I would try running Windows Firewall while ZoneAlarm was shut down. I'm not sure whether AVG would install correctly with that firewall in place, but it would be worth a try.

Joy,
Lynn

Thanks, Lynn. You gave me an idea and after putting "AVG repair option" into Google, I was lead to a downloadable tool from the AVG website called AVG Remover. It purported to be a last resort option to completely cleanse your system of AVG if all other attempts to uninstall it had failed.

It didn't really work entirely - but it did clear out enough of the AVG files that I was able to delete the small batch that remained. A search of the system now fails to find a single AVG file, so I guess it worked.

Now I'm going to go install it from scratch and hopefully that will solve the issues. I would just leave it off and stick with MSSE, but unfortunately the futzing around I've been doing trying to clear AVG seems to have damaged it. Since last night I can't get it to do a full scan. It gets halfway and then crashes. So if I can get AVG back to working smoothly again, I'll just delete MSSE and have done with it.

Thanks again!

LabRat

Try Avast - it's a little slower loading than AVG and it has annoying pop-up boxes that you can shut off - but my system was infected while using AVG (requiring a clean install of everything) and Avast caught the buggers when they tried again.

Thanks, Dandello. AVG seems to be back to running smoothly for now, but I will check this out. I'm not as confident about AVG as I was previously and I'd really like to go with something else. Not least because MMSE - when it was working - caught several trojans that AVG apparently hadn't.

Thanks for the info.

LabRat

Well, my system was attacked when I went to a game site that has had a good reputation for years (obviously THEY had been attacked and I had the misfortune of logging on before their problem was handled) - AVG let through a **** load of stuff that wouldn't go away and I ended up re-partitioning, formatting, and doing a clean install of my OS. Luckily I had a full back up from BEFORE the attack.

AVG had been letting a lot of emails through that I KNOW had trojans and viruses. On the clean install I loaded Avast instead and it has caught all the suspect emails. (Not a single email with an .exe has gotten through to my inbox.)

Unfortunately, it seems than any time an anti-virus program gets popular, it becomes a target for the bad guys. AVG was fine until it got popular enough for the virus/trojan writers to take it into account and work around it. Norton and McAfee have both been there for some time.

I won't even go into the horror stories I've dealt with from people who had Norton's on their system from their ISP.

Given how poor a job it does and how much it can bog down a system while refusing to uninstall I know people who consider Norton a piece of malware.

Another vote here for Avast on Windows PCs - though I'll add that one of the reasons I'm gradually shifting over to Linux is that it's more or less immune to casual infection.

Well, I installed Avast and so far I have to say I'm fairly impressed. It took a reassuringly long time to do a full scan and the interface is clear and easy to deal with.

Unfortunately, I woke up this morning to find that my hard drive had completely died on me. After a few hours of working with it, Stuart declared it kaput and went and bought me another one.

I've decided not to bother installing AVG on the new one and just stick with Avast for now.

Now...just tearing my hair out trying to figure out why Thunderbird is telling me my username and password aren't valid and how to get it working and get everything else I need in place again! Think I might be in for a couple of days of frustration before I'm up and running!

LabRat

A little late to the chat, but I've had very good results with avira free, only thing I don't like about it is that I can't find the auto-update, I have to click the update button every day.

Funnily enough, I haven't been able to persuade Avast to auto update either. But it's a small issue - I don't mind manually setting up a scan. It's still working very well. At the moment, sadly, practically the only thing on my pc that is!

But, thanks to Stuart, I've just this instant finally got to grips with the strange whims of Windows 7 and solved most of the issues I was having with that. Can backup my files again - whew!

Now, all I have to do is figure out how to retrieve my bookmarks, address book and a folder of key data from my old hd. A task which is eluding me for now, but I hope will be solved before too long!

LabRat

I assume you actually have access to the data on your old HD.

Netscape puts your bookmarks and passwords in a profile - Find Documents and Settings (make sure you can see the 'hidden' and 'system' files.) Find your user folder => Application Data => Mozilla => Firefox => Profiles

Copy the most recent profile and put it in the same directory on your new HD. THEN follow the instructions at http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Managing+profiles?s=manage+profiles&as=s
to select your old profile as the default.

Can't help you on Thunderbird - I never did get it to work for me but Outlook uses .pst files. Those will be in Application Data somewhere as well.

And Avast auto-update: Settings => Update
Settings is a tab at the top but the update tab is in a list in the left column. Then make sure the little radio button is clicked.

Hey, Dandello - unfortunately, no. Stuart has a 'gizmo' which he said should be able to locate the necessary data on the old hd and transfer it to the new one.

Unfortunately, when he hooked it all up, the old hd was inaccessible. I don't know what caused it to die, but whatever it was, it's made it impossible to retrieve anything from it, it seems.

It's going to take a few months to piece together the data I've lost, I suspect. Fun, fun, fun....

Thanks for the other info. I'll check that out.


LabRat

Sounds like you had an old-fashioned crash - so named for when the read-head actually when SMACK against the magnetic media and sometimes left dents.

Unfortunately, recovering data from a major hardware failure costs major money.

Now, repeat after me: "I will do a weekly full system backup..."