If you’re running AVG Virus Scanner, it’s probably been bugging you lately about upgrading to the newer version 8.0.
But if you clicked on the link, it tried to sell you the upgraded version.
There is still a free version available here. You have to confirm a couple of times that you really, really just want the free version, but it’s not hard to find from there.
There are reasons to upgrade, and reasons to wait. The new version has built-in spyware and rootkit scanning (two threats related to viruses). It’s good to have all your scanning integrated into one package, so that multiple scanners aren’t fighting over who gets to check a file first.
However, there have been a few bugs noted. In particular, I haven’t been able to get it working right on Mom’s computer yet.
So I recommend that you wait a week or 3 before you upgrade. And when you do, it’s probably a good idea to completely uninstall the old version first.
7 responses so far ↓
1 Richard // May 22, 2008 at 8:08 am
I installed version 8 on all three of our computers a few weeks ago. Everything seems fine except I had to disable the “Link Scanner” function. Apparently it causes all the links on a page to be checked to see if they might be pointing to sites with known viruses. All that background internet activity was really slowing down everything else because of my link speed and latency. I suspect anyone with a dial up connection would have a real problem.
2 Don // May 22, 2008 at 8:39 am
I also installed it on one of my computers a few weeks ago. I disabled the email scan because that computer is not used for email. Everything else seems to be working fine.
I guess we won’t need to use Ad-Aware or Spybot if this works well.
3 Donna // May 22, 2008 at 10:09 am
I too, installed it a few weeks ago. I was as frustrated as you in trying to find the free one. I almost gave up and asked you about it, but finally located it. I know I did have to do some tweaks to the settings when I first started running it. It seems to be fine, but a bit slower. Maybe mine is checking links like Richard mentioned. I’ll have to look at that.
4 Daryl // May 23, 2008 at 10:27 am
I have used the previous AVG Spyware Scanner on a few computers before. It often caught things that AdAware and SpyBot missed, but I don’t think I ever ran them in the opposite order, so it’s possible that SpyBot and AdAware catch things that AVG doesn’t.
One big advantage is that it is resident, while the free version of AdAware and SpyBot only scan on demand.
In my experience the best spyware scanner is Webroot’s Spy Sweeper. But it costs $30 or $40 a year, something like that, so I usually only recommend it in the worst cases, where somebody just can’t keep their computer clean. I haven’t compared the new AVG program to it.
5 Daryl // May 26, 2008 at 8:46 pm
When you turned off the Link Scanner, did you find a way to also turn off the warning? My AVG icon in the tray has a big exclamation mark in it, though the disabled link scanner is the only thing wrong.
6 Richard // May 28, 2008 at 9:27 pm
No, it has the warning exclamation mark. I wish it were possible to turn it off since the only thing amiss is the fact that I have chosen not to use one feature. That seems like a poor design IMO. I do check it every day or two to make sure it is getting updates and that the warning is not from some other cause.
7 Daryl // May 31, 2008 at 9:55 am
I found out why it doesn’t work right on some computers, including Mom’s.
There is a bug in AVG 8.0 that is incompatible with FAT32 formatted hard drives. Mom’s was so formatted.
I converted her hard drive to NTFS, and AVG now works fine.
FYI!