AVG8 is doing my head in!

Anybody else noticed that Grisoft seem to be using an old fridge as their update server lately?

Mine keeps complaining that the virus definitions are out of date but when I try to update them it throws a total eppy and won't update itself. Something about the server not being available.

On the odd occasion, it starts downloading the update, gets half way through then hangs for five minutes before telling me "update failed" - something I'd kinda worked out for myself three and a half minutes prior.

I never had this ridiculous pantomime with AVG7, and its not the first time I've had issues like this with AVG8.

Its currently sitting in my system tray with a red exclamation mark on it, like its expecting ME to fix it.

</rant>

It has happened a few times before, nothing to be worried about, it will fix itself.

AVG sucks anyway, if you have some spare money, buy kaspersky.

Yep, but why doesn't it just tell me when its fixed instead of nagging me to update when it knows damn well that it can't?
I'm going to see if I can get a copy of Panda from Netto. Got to be better than this crap!

AVG is better than kaspersky. I've seen a few times that kaspersky didn't find viruses which AVG found. McAfee is probably the worst in finding viruses, and it hogs the CPU like nuts (more than any other program on your PC). Norton screws up your system totally, F-PROT also.
It seems all commercial anti-virus softwares are crap.

AVG and ClamAV (=ClamWin) seem to be the best, I would even pay for them.

Makes me laugh when people think Norton is better because it never finds any viruses.

Out of curiosity, has anyone else noticed AVG8 hogging a lot more RAM than v7?

All of 8s processes are totaling roughly 50mb, I don't recall 7 being that high.

Yes, AVG8 is not so good as AVG7. I hope they will fix it.

When I used avg, it was perfect around the beginning, but it's following nortons footsteps it seems.

After dealing with the hell of norton on another pc, I don't want to deal with AVG (wannabe) either.

Is XP and Vista not safe enough, or what? I haven't had a virus in years, and my luck isn't the greatest.

It seems ClamAV/ClamWin wins the battle then. I've used it on servers for some time, and it works like a charm (it's the only one which can update itself via http proxy), it's also used by many big companies, and it's the main anti-virus program for Linux too.

Care to explain first hand features and experience with it? What has it prevented and helped with, truly? Same for AVG, and i'm not talking about it detecting viruses in completely safe programs (as it does frequently).

When I had AVG, it only detected viruses in programs like WPE, and several other apps that had no threat on my side.

I use the free version of Avira Antivir, it seems to work ok. Every now and then it shows an add which can be clicked away.

Hrmmm... I've never had much luck with ClamAV. I *want* to like it, but most other antivirus/antimalware software I've used/tested have found sound ClamAV seems to be consistently blissfully unaware of.

More power to you if it's your AV of choice - I just wanted to provide the obligatory "Didn't do it for me" counterpoint.

AVG did same to me...simply refuse to update database...since I was unable to do it manually and i got pissed off, I just left bastard in red color and later it fixed on its own...what i did noticed is that every day scan start at 12:00, it always found some crap for deletion, even I wasnt surfing net at all or plug in any new device on computer...and I did notice that its reporting same stuff deleted previous day...point is..no matter i use computer or not, every scan, thing found something..and i think AVG will soon die on my computer..

I used CA EZ antivirus, then Bitdefender 8, then bitdefender 9 and now bitdefender 10.

No problems at all. Installed nicely, has found and disinfected a few worms, doesn't seem to hog resources, but that might just be because it's running on a dualcore. Lot's of people seem to have problems with bitdefender 10, but I'm pretty happy with it.

I currently use Avast Home Edition - seems to work quite well.

Check out the reviews of different AVs:

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/index.php/taxid;790908123;st;6;tax%5B0%5D;790908123;pg;1#prodlist

Bitdefender scores highly and Avast... (although Norton isnt that far behind - havent used it in a LONG time)

That happens to mine, but only when I boot up and my laptop hasn't connected to the Wifi router yet.

If it nags too much, you can right click the Update manager in the AVG console and tell it to "ignore component state".

Mine usually recovers and downloads everything pretty quickly within a few minutes of getting my Wifi connected.

>I just left bastard in red color and later it fixed on its own...

Lol, Naugthy you should be a comedian.

I used to use AVG7 and then AVG8 but their realtime protection sucks. They also leave registry keys after uninstalling that gave me a hard time to install Kaspersky or other antivir programs.

Kaspersky found some viruses and other whatnot which AVG8 couldn't find. It alsa has better heuristics and deeper scan options. I turned on all the options of deep scanning and it took 6 hours to scan a 160gb harddisk with 80gb of data. It's light too. I love it so far.

As very general users I'm not that sure we can really know something like this. I mean, AVG 'finds' viruses on my machine that I'm sure other anti-virus programs will miss... but they're not necessarily viruses, they could just as well be (and actually have been) false positives. I'm not really sure how we're supposed to assess anti-virus software with any degree of certainty -- they seem to be mostly a matter of faith :/

I used to use AVG, but switched to ESET/NOD32 around the time support for AVG7 ran out. Never looked back. ESET Smart Security is easily the better product. We use CA Anti-Virus at work, and it just slows the PC down to a crawl. ESET on the other hand not only has better detection, but also uses less resources.

It costs, sure. But I generally find you get what you pay for.

Surely you jest? If you aren't using any AV software, how do you know you haven't had a virus in years?

Lol, its probably been your PC and others like it that have been spamming my ass off for the last few years without your knowlage. The most "effective/useful" viruses & exploits wont make the PC behave weirdly or perform badly because the criminals dont want it discovered. Windows has a history of being easily hijackable. Most notably windows 98/ME, 2k and XP (probably the most abused of them all!)

Hopefully now vista has adopted a few 'unix/linux-like' ideas to things like execution prevention/permissions and their own answer to "sudo" (run as admin Yes/No {LOL!!}) so hopefully these problems will be on the decline)

@gfk, if the update is failing, does it give a reason why or any clues why in the logs like access denied / timeouts etc. Maybe there are other servers you can set it to to update from :/ I have not had a problem with avg+vista (other than V7 wouldn't work)

and just now AVG again got red, and i got red too and its kiss good bye for this Av sucker..

I vote for Kaspersky...

NOD32

I dropped BitDefender 10 for NOD32 recently. BitDefender used to be great but, with the latest release, it's become bloated and sloooow.

NOD32 has a really small memory footprint, is fast and, most importantly, an excellent detection rate.

Yes.

I still use AVG7 so it's not specifically an AVG8 problem.

Strange, I still get daily updates for AVG7.

Most AV software start good with a simple design that works, and after a while they build more (cpu and HD eating) stuff in it with a lot of bling.

At this moment I prefer Avast. It's free, does what it needs to do and has no popup ads which tells you to buy a full version after each updatecheck

If I were inclined, I'd buy ESET's NOD32. I just run ClamWin occasionally instead. I don't visit dodgy websites and I'm generally clued up on what to click and, more importantly, what not to click.

I caught more virii on my Amiga than I ever have on my PC.

I also recommend "NoScript" add-on to Firefox users. It basically block all the scripts, flash etc. on webpages until you specify that webpage is safe.

ESET is good, although its a trifle expensive.

I also use Avast when I got fed up of AVG. It's free and worth a try.

I just diched AVG v8 (after using AVG for 2 years) and am now road-testing AVAST Free edition.
So far it has found a fair few trojans which AVG never picked up on.
Oh, and it's a lot more configurable too.

One more plug, it has a nice option: "Check for full screen apps/games running before displaying popups"
Thumbs up for that option

ESET is not expensive, you get far more value for your money spent on ESET than you would spending the same on Norton.

>ESET is not expensive, you get far more value for your money spent on ESET
>than you would spending the same on Norton.

True, but I think their point was that it was more expensive than paying nothing...

It's less expensive than losing $4000 because some scriptkiddie just emptied out your account. Swings and roundabouts I guess. If you have nothing to lose, I guess rubbish protection is still better than none at all.

i didnt have net access when i installed norton (i would have asked otherwise cos everyone says its the devils poop) my pc came with a trial of bullgard which even with no internet access available would try and update itself every 5 mins which got very annoying and by the time i had internet it had long since expired its trial now just nags me to buy it if i forget to disable it after booting up (never bothered uninstalling it or taking it out of the boot up)

norton (knowing the name not the shoddy history) was purchaced but not once on the box did i see the words "i need to be verified online before i can work" i was tempted to take it back for a refund as i wasnt getting online anytime soon via ntl so it was a useless product (still is? ;) )
i accepted i couldnt update the 'ker but thought i could atleast USE it offline