Update: AVG Virus Scanner Accidentally Removes Critical Windows Component

As the title says a recent AVG update recently decided a windows file was a virus.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=13407

One suggested cure is to reinstall Windows.

Cheerio John

This corroborates my recent thread on why AVG is a pile of useless nonsense.

When I had AVG it did that also, but it usually decided that the best action for the file was to do nothing.

My opinion FWIW:

AVG V7.5 is excellent. It's small, it's extremely reliable, and it has very little impact on the performance of other programs. It's still available for download from third party web sites, and it's still having signature list updates released for it by AVG very frequently, although I suspect not for much longer.

AVG8 is a buggy and particularly nasty example of dominatory bloatware. It slows down a computer drastically, if it doesn't crash the operating system first. Its entire underlying concept is utterly misguided and it should be banished from the face of the universe immediately. Despite being told this by umpteen users on their forum, AVG are still persisting with it. Microsoft can survive such marketing arrogance but I question whether a small company such as AVG operating in a non-monopoly market can.

Many people are recommending Avast as a suitable replacement when updates for AVG V7.5 cease. I haven't yet tried Avast myself.

John
This post represents my own personal opinions which are not necessarily those of the Razorback Railway - but I think Larry would agree!

I have also had trouble with AVG and Microsoft anti Virus programs they both think TRS2006 is a virus and close it down this has onlt happened since I had to change to Vista.
The only way I can run TRS2006 is to close every thing that runs in the background,on the computer as well as my internet connection,so that only TRS2006 is running.
Cheers
Derek

I see what most of you are saying and wonder why I've never had any problems.

I simply upgraded when 8.0 came along and have never had any issues. Everything seems to chunder along as it did before with all updates taking place as they should. The only difference that I've had is being told that a computer re-start is necessary after some updates have taken place. These I've simply left alone and things have returned to normal after a normal re-start.

I only hope I won't regret these remarks later!

Terry

Terry,
Do you mean AVG 8.0 as that is the one I have and it still shuts TRS2006 down on occasions.
Derek

Derek

The version given is 8.0.175 and it's certainly never shut anything down yet for me.

I occasionally get an error saying that comms have been lost with the AVG website and that subsequently a particular update hasn't occurred but it usually cures itself within a few hours or I can force the update manually.

Terry

That has got to be the reason my system has been giving me nothing but trouble lately.

Thank you very much John and John.

Rick

One of the articles I read about this said it only affected some of the non-English versions of AVG, and all of them said that the user would be asked to delete the file, not that it would be automatically deleted - so nothing should happen unless you do it...

Paul

paulzmay said:

One of the articles I read about this said it only affected some of the non-English versions of AVG, and all of them said that the user would be asked to delete the file, not that it would be automatically deleted - so nothing should happen unless you do it...

Paul

Click to expand...

I merely stumbled across the article in a fairly reputable source and mentioned it because it looked potentially fatal to me. Would every user know every Windows file that could be deleted safely or isolated safely? I don't think I would so unless you feel very confident AVG knows exactly what they are doing or that the Gods will act so that any really dangerous updates do not arrive my recommendation would be to simply avoid this product.

Cheerio John

johnwhelan said:

I merely stumbled across the article in a fairly reputable source and mentioned it because it looked potentially fatal to me. Would every user know every Windows file that could be deleted safely or isolated safely? I don't think I would so unless you feel very confident AVG knows exactly what they are doing or that the Gods will act so that any really dangerous updates do not arrive my recommendation would be to simply avoid this product.

Cheerio John

Click to expand...

Fair enough - it doesn't excuse AVG's screw-up, but it might allay some fears that it will do something that the user has no control over. It's certainly well worth posting the warning, and I'll be thinking very hard if AVG ever asks me to delete an important looking file...

Paul

It did affect English Xp because it affected my computer, well tried to anyway, the warning came up when my wife was using it and she clicked OK
But as I also have Spybot's resident registry guard running it came up and notified her that AVG was trying to change the registry, that's when she called me, all I had to do was deny the change, I jumped on the net and found out what was going on and that AVG had already put out a new definition file to correct this, but as I have AVG only updating when starting it hadn't picked up the new definition file as the computer had been on for hours, so it was just a case of hitting the update button :hehe:
As for the average computer user not knowing what files are what I agree, but have you seen the latest figures that say that about 40% of the home computers on the net do so without any firewall or virus protection at all, so rather than say avoid AVG because of ONE error, you should be shouting "GET SOME PROTECTION".
And as far as Norton is concerned, my wife's laptop came with it installed and I had to dig really hard and deep into the registry to remove it, even then six months later it popped up and nagged that the free trial was up and I should start paying for it :n:
Someone who knows a lot more than me removed the offending entry and associated files for me, he also told me he makes a reasonable amount of money removing Norton from business machines when they change to another Virus checker.

Cheers David

I'm still following all this and obviously there are some very serious issues with its installation with some folk.

Equally obviously, there must be a reason why I'm not being affected.
What are the crucial differences between my setup (XP) and others?

Terry

If you did not scan your drive using the offending update before it was updated again then it couldn't affect you, the ones most affected are the ones that do a check every 24 hours or less.
And as it happened when most of Australia's computers would of been turned off it affected here a lot less than elsewhere :hehe:

Cheers David

Just for general information, I spent all night reinstalling Windows XP Pro with SP3 because of it and am now using Avast instead.
Gotta admit, Windows hasn't run ths well in a long long time. I'm glad I did reinstall everything.

Mine also scans only on start so I must have been lucky and missed the bad file. Phew!!

Terry

steamdrivre said:

That has got to be the reason my system has been giving me nothing but trouble lately.

Thank you very much John and John.

Rick

Click to expand...

steamdrivre said:

Just for general information, I spent all night reinstalling Windows XP Pro with SP3 because of it and am now using Avast instead.
Gotta admit, Windows hasn't run ths well in a long long time. I'm glad I did reinstall everything.

Click to expand...

Nope, if you were affected by this you would not be able to boot into windows at all, so if XP was giving you trouble it was caused by something else.
By all means use Avast, its as good (or bad) as AVG, but do not blame AVG for your troubles.

Cheers David