Problems with AVG 8

A while ago I talked about my security setup. One of the components was NOD32. But the free subscription ran out so I switched back to AVG Free virus scanner.

Last week I upgraded to version 8 of the AVG Free suite and that’s where the problems started. Things were a little slow for a bit and the whole system seems a little buggy. Then on Saturday the whole thing fell over.

Shortly after booting up my PC would seize up and would require a hard boot to get it back going again. My first suspicion was AVG, and it turned out I was right. I tried turning it off, but every time I clicked on the tray icon to try to access the program using menus, it locked my PC up, and you guessed it, I had to reboot it.

I tried to uninstall it, but that locked it up too. I also tried killing the AVG processes using Task Manager, with the same results. So I was a bit stuck. Short of deleting the folder with the program in I had limited options as I generally had about 1 – 2 minutes of operating time before the PC had to be rebooted. And that was if I didn’t touch AVG.

So I tried to stop it from stating up on a reboot.

In the Start menu I clicked on Run and typed in ‘msconfg’. This brought up the config dialog box. On the Startup tab I unchecked avgTray. Then I saved the changes and rebooted.

This time AVG didn’t start up and I was able to uninstall it, and get my PC back to good running order. Whew!

There is apparently a way to install version 8 without it giving you such a headache, but I haven’t had a go at it yet. When / if I do I’ll let you know how it goes.