Help! I think I got a virus!

[TheDoctor]

Six years at the 'F' word. I then went back to electrical engineering.

 

[ian turner]

Sorry, Jez, but that is just plain wrong. It works fine.
And that's six years as an IT pro talking there, before you start.

Partly wrong as the av packages are variable and can cause mayhem on their own with false positives as
already observed and can become memory hogs in various versions. AVGs google link verifier for instance
a few years back. But then they pull their act together for a while

 

[Jezston]

Sorry, Jez, but that is just plain wrong. It works fine.
And that's six years as an IT pro talking there, before you start.

AVG Free may be better than it was a few years ago, but I just remember from some years back, maybe 7 or so when the AVGFree/Zonealarm combo were the most popular choices out there. I'm certainly no IT expert but I was the only person most of my family and friends knew who knew much about computers, and the amount of horrendously infected machines I saw that AVG Free said were totally free of viruses was staggering. Upgrade to the paid for version and somehow all those viruses were found and removed, but by that point their machines were so messed up it was backup and format time. Plenty of people would say "oh I've got AVG Free and I've never had a virus!" when I'd bring this up. Until they discovered they DID have and AVG just hadn't told them.

Lets just say I have a bit of a thing against AVG Free after all that.

Sorry I couldn't be more constructive, but if the free one was fine why would they sell a paid for version?

 

[ian turner]

faster updates to the main engine and customer support.

 

[Bman]

Licensing. You cant (legally) use AVG Free for your business. It's for personal use only.

 

[2Loose]

Are you using AVG Free?

Get rid of it. It's useless. Get a proper paid-for AV like Avira or Avast.

Avira and Avast both have free versions (and are both very well well regarded, as is AVG).

Personally, I dislike AVG due to a number of false positives, but I would rather it was too diligent than missed things.

Glad you got it sorted out Arch.

 

[goo_mason]

I have AVG Free on the PC and have been using it since around 2005 - never had any problems with it.

Use the AVG Internet Security package on the laptop (because I got it free for three years with my Home Computing Scheme package through work), and haven't noticed it being any better or worse than the free version.

But I'm steering away from the OP; glad you've got it sorted, Arch. System Restore can be a wonderful thing!

 

[SavageHoutkop]

I was just on Cyclechat on my samsung netbook, when Firefox crashed, all the desktop icons disappeared for a moment and I got a window up saying AVG had detected a security risk, and gave me the option to quarantine it, which I did.

Er... do you have a firewall and an antivirus, or just an antivirus?
You might also want to do a spyware sweep (spybot) and a ccleaner sweep just in case.

 

[SavageHoutkop]

System Restore can be a wonderful thing!

I've only ever wanted to use it once and it didn't work.

 

[Bman]

I've only ever wanted to use it once and it didn't work.

I've always disabled System Restore. It hides viruses in a place where AV programs cant delete them and takes up disc space.

I did want to use it the other day, when a MS update caused a bluescreen loop... Oh well, a rebuild is better anyway.

 

[2Loose]

AVG Free may be better than it was a few years ago, but I just remember from some years back, maybe 7 or so when the AVGFree/Zonealarm combo were the most popular choices out there. I'm certainly no IT expert but I was the only person most of my family and friends knew who knew much about computers, and the amount of horrendously infected machines I saw that AVG Free said were totally free of viruses was staggering. Upgrade to the paid for version and somehow all those viruses were found and removed, but by that point their machines were so messed up it was backup and format time. Plenty of people would say "oh I've got AVG Free and I've never had a virus!" when I'd bring this up. Until they discovered they DID have and AVG just hadn't told them.

Lets just say I have a bit of a thing against AVG Free after all that.

Sorry I couldn't be more constructive, but if the free one was fine why would they sell a paid for version?

I do remember seeing more f*kked PC's running AVG than I could shake a stick at 3-4 years ago. But this was mainly because the updates hadn't been done.

Users putting on a piece of decent AV software but never updating it. Nowadays EVERYTHING automatically updates, thankfully.