Secure Computing: Free Virus Protection With AVG Free Edition
During my career in the computer field, I have found that any of the well-known free anti-virus utilities will do the job and are essential in a well rounded security plan. When asked what is “the best” free anti-virus utility the answer really comes down to personal preference.
This week we will wrap up our coverage of free anti-virus utilities. Last week we covered Avira AntiVir and Avast Home Edition, and today we will cover what is arguably the most effective and popular free anti-virus utility: Grisoft’s AVG Free Edition.
Installation is straight forward for the most part. You will want to make sure there is a free license already included when installing as shown here.
During installation you will be prompted to choose to include the Toolbar or not. Personally I am not a fan of toolbars at all so I would not install this, but AVG advises more web threats can be avoided when using it.
Internet Explorer and Firefox already include good Phishing protection, so in my opinion the toolbar is overkill, but you can make your own decision with some detailed information from their site.
After a successful installation, a wizard begins to prompt for specific settings for the utility. One of the most important is to get the latest updates for the virus database.
Other settings to select are what time to perform a daily scan and register with AVG. You can go through the wizard or skip the process entirely as changes can be made later.
All settings and components can be controlled from the User Interface. AVG Free Edition includes more than just anti-virus protection. Other components include:
| Anti-Spyware | Protects against malicious software applications |
| Email Scanner | Integrates with Outlook to scan email messages and attachments for Viruses and Spyware |
| Resident Shield | Real-time protection against viruses and malicious spyware |
Full system scans seem comparable to both Avast and AntiVir and you can also control the speed… the faster the scan the more CPU processing power required if you want to continue to use the computer while the scan is running.
Details of detections are shown in the user interface as detected. This is where you can also pause, start, or resume a scan.
There are a surprising amount of settings and options to customize how AVG works. This is where to control scan schedules and a whole host of other options.
Pop up notifications are shown near the clock on the taskbar.
All email messages will be scanned and this will be verified by a message at the bottom of each email. Also, as with the other anti-virus applications we have covered, AVG integrates into Windows Explorer so you can scan individual files by right clicking.
Conclusion
AVG is so popular for a reason: the user interface is attractive and quite easy to use and there's also a bunch of options available to allow you to customize the behavior to your liking. It also offers a lot of components and options that are only available in the professional version of other utilities, at the great price of free.
If you have used AVG for a while please comment and let us know your thoughts and opinions, or any recommended settings that you use.
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I've been using AVG since their first release in the early 90's and all my PCs I've ever used it on have been virus free ever since then. Of course it also helps to be a vigilant PC user
The only problem I ever had with their software was when I upgraded from version 7 to 8 and their updater was't connecting. It turned out to be a network card driver issue and not their software at all. 10/10 to AVG for a great product and keeping my computers virus free for many years. AVG, on quite a few occasions, picked up viruses where other leading anti virus software, like McAfee and Norton didn't.
If you don't like the "AVG scanned" message under your e-mails, you can turn it off in the settings menu.
Dubble clik the AVG icon in the system tray. In the menubar, goto "Tools" -> "Advanced Settings" -> "E-mail scanner". Then uncheck the "Certify e-mail" option for outgoing en incoming mail. The scanner still scans your e-mail, but doesn't add the message to your mail.
AVG is a pretty good program that doesn't use a lot of resources. I would recommend this one. One negative thing is that it gives a few false positives.
I've used Avira AntiVir and Avast as well as AVG on my computers for years. While I like AntiVir, I find it a bit intrusive - drove my wife "crazy", and Avast, except the user interface, I always go back to AVG which I find the least intrusive. I've never had a significant virus issue. Yes, I get some, but AVG clears things up. I do occasional online scans as a back up. Again, I prefer AVG Free since it is light on resources, reasonably quick, easy to customize, not intrusive and, personally, I like the interface.
I used to use AVG but have switched to avast. Reason, AVG doesn't seem to like updating as much as the older version, even having it go for around 2 days before it stated an update was available - yet in older versions were daily, if not twice daily. Avast is not as user friendly as AVG, but I'll swap that for up to date definitions.
I hated AVG 7.x because it failed to find tons of virus but I really like the 8.0 release.
One of the things I like the most is that if he finds a virus - let's say in a *.exe - it blocks its execution even if you choose to ignore the virus warning!
Nice article, and good advice for people with time-limited or resource-intensive security suites on their PCs. I've found that AVG's LinkScanner feature really slows down older PCs. I recommend turning it off (or not installing it) if you're not running a dual core machine. I don't have AVG installed at the moment, but I believe you turn it off by right-clicking it in the interface and clicking Disable. You then have to tell AVG to ignore the fact that LinkScanner is turned off, or you get a red exclamation point in your system tray. Hope that helps.
Luis, what if he's wrong and there's no virus there? Very normal for AVG and may turn out very unpleasant. And who's the boss anyway? Windows already thinks he is, now antivirus thinks he is. What about user than? Well actually user is the boss and he has all the power to uninstall every cheeky program that thinks otherwise.
I have used the program for some time now, and the only problem I've had since upgrading to 8.X, is that when scanning a single file from the context menu (right click) AVG scans multiple files and takes several min, where AVG 7.x would scan that one file and be done w/in a few seconds to at most 1 min. Anyone know why this is?
I've used AVG for about 3 years now. Unfortunately, in the past year, I've seen it put more and more of a load on the system. Updates frequently abort, requiring a couple of attempts, and connects with the server often fail. Despite this, I do like their checkmark review of Google'd sites; so I moved AVG to my Vista system which I use more for website searches. But, I did have to take it off of my XP system which has a slower cpu, smaller drive and less memory. On the XP system, I've installed AntiVir — much smaller footprint and faster, more reliable updates.
Ive used AVG free for some 10 years and it has progressively got heavier plaing more load on my system, which is a shame, it has gone fo a useful lightweighht program into a complicated mess. Good nonetheless though
I too have used AVG since I learned about it. Not quite 10 years as some comments, but through several version updates. I find the problems mentioned about inability to connect to update sites as a non-issue. If your system resources are taxed, then consider your system needs an upgrade. Running XP, Intel Duo 3.2Ghz with 2GB of RAM, AVG is at work using less than 60MB of CPU. Slow on scans, but free is free. I have tried others, but AVG is the one I return to.
Correction: 60MB of RAM. Too bad no edit feature exists here.
I'm not using it because the LinkScan feature causes a lot of extra internet traffic for you and the rest of the planet, and is causing other issues. Yes, it can be turned off, but it is on by default (you knwo, the way most everyone will leave it) and I don't trust a company that thought this would be a good idea. See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/avg_disguises_fake_traffic_as_ie6/
I liked 7 very much. I found 8.x a problem, if fact spending more time on it than warranted just due to a little error icon in the tray. It's gone bye for now but I think it was maybe the best of several I tried.
I've used AVG for years without any trouble but since I installed v8 (8.0.169) I get a connection update every day. When I manually click on the update link it works fine. The error icon in the system tray is annoying. I disabled the link scanner add-on in Firefox as well but other than that everything is fine.
I've used AVG since version 7 first came out, and am now very happy with version 8. The Link Scanner honestly doesn't work as well as McAfee's Site Advisor does, but it's good to have in addition I guess. I feel that system resource usage is right in line with any of today's software, and certainly much easier to use and more effective then the big name brands like Trend, McAfee, and Norton/Symantec. Norton products, while rated as very effective usually, just have a horrible interface, and poor customization options, and also seem to break very easily, requiring you to uninstall and reinstall to get it working again. McAfee products, besides their Site Advisor, just are horrible in every aspect to me.
But there are a lot of computers I see every day that people have a current version of Norton or McAfee or whatever, and it lets things get by, or are not working properly, and I install AVG and run a scan, AVG will always find something that the other guys missed.
I think AVG's update servers for the Free version are not a priority, so obviously there might be a few quirks in updating, but I would say maybe once every 30 days I'll notice that an update didn't go through right or whatever. I can live with it, it's free, and I thank AVG and any company or person that takes their time and effort to give away their product for free, it's very generous of them.
avg is the best and does anyone have a free license??
In the independent AV trials AVG returned highest number of false positives of all popular AV softwares . this is a reason why I rather pay for my Nod32 which has been consistently giving lowest false positives, as well as being one of the most proactive AV programes around
IRT ZetaPirate's question about single file scan from the context menu, the reason the scan takes so long in AVG 8 is because you have the option 'scan system environment' selected in Tools>Advanced Settings>Scans>Shell extension scans. While this does a more thorough scan, it takes more time. Untick this option and it will not scan the system evironment, speeding up your scan to just a few seconds.
Been using AVG (8 Free) for a short time.
I find that it takes a very long time to scan office files (.doc, .xls) both during the incoming e-mail scan, then also when you open the file, either for the first time or from a saved file on the C drive.
I'm talking 2+ minutes to open a basic Excel or Word file…
I looking for a replacement
what to do with AVG warnings?
I have used AVG on the computers at Franklinton Junior High School of Louisiana for the entire ten years I have been the technology admin there and the children are more free to do what they want because of how good it is. If there is a virus my laptop is pinged an I can destroy it on the spot. I love the AVG Anti-virus because ever since the first virus that was downloaded to the server was detected and able to be automatically deleted the principal has allowed me to be more free with what I allow the children to do. We have a server especially for the children that has five petabytes of storage. Each child has thier own 512 gigabyte partition and they can do what they want with that space. All thier school work goes on a 50 gigabyte partition that each of them have. Thank the lord for AVG.
Been using AVG for quite a long time. After a while I get dissatisfied with how slow it goes so I try others, and find out that it's not much different and mainly the longer time to scan is because of all my files, not because of AVG. Increasing from 80GB to 1500GB should probably be expected to take a little longer - right?
Biggest troubles I have is the occasional failure to update from the free site. I easily recommend it without hesitation to all my family & friends. And to my friends with better jobs, I convince them to get a paid version to get better download speeds and access to support if they might ever need it.
All-in-all: AVG gets my support before others, mainly because I'm very comfortable with the lack of trouble I've had with it - no viruses, and not much interference from the software itself. That's a great combination.
@Mike S:
The size of the drive matters less than the amount of files you have on it. So if you're not adding any additional files to the 150GB it should be about the same. In fact it could be quicker if the 150GB drive is faster RPM.
AVG is a very good antivirus application. Some friends installed avast, received normal updates, and wondered why their computer was slow. I installed AVG, and with in seconds, several virus/trojan warnings appeared. So your saying, that must have been in the early days, or probibily a false positive. Both wrong. This was less then 6 months ago, and once AVG removed the trojan (I forget the name), the system preformance increased.
What I don't like is the requirement in AVG 8 to have SP2 installed on XP, before you can install it. Had an issue with a virus over DSL attack, while trying to install a fresh XP. Fighting with a virus to get SP2 downloaded and installed so I could install AVG 8. AVG 7 (no longer offered), would install on the base installation of XP.
In the end, it took about 6 hours of installing XP over and over (installed about 20 times) to get SP2. I finally installed a trial of Kaprisky anitvirus, before connecting to the internet, then installing XP SP2, then AVG 8. Kaprisky refuses to uninstall, and wants me to buy it (install trap, once installed, you can't uninstall it (uninstaller says application is not installed, installer says softer is installed), you have to buy it).
If you have XP, get AVG 7 or stream atleast SP2 into your XP install CD, and save yourself alot of hassel. You can always update/upgrade to AVG 8.
I simply don't trust other antivirus applications, even more so, when they fail to detect a virus with their latest definitions, but AVG with old definitions detects and removes them.
AVG definitely slows down your computer. It's a complete lie for them to say it doesn't use much CPU. If you use any program that requires a large amount of CPU or if you are a gamer, this program will affect your performance. Any virus program you get sacrifices CPU for a sense of security. If you aren't stupid you don't need this. If you like going to random sites and downloading random things constantly this program is for you. Otherwise, gtfo avg, you raped my computer.
AVG is awesome!
I like to let you know of some problems associated with AVG that you might warn your readers about, just so they can fore-warned.
I installed AVG Pro last fall based on your recommendation. Generally, I've really liked it until recently. So far as I can tell, it's kept me virus free, and I can schedule when it runs. BUT recently
I've had problems with AVG Internet Security being off.
Evidently it's associated with updating the software; last night I installed updates, and this morning I was notified that the internet security was off. I went to the AVG site and installed the reset program, and things were ok after I restarted. The thing is, there was no notification about needing an update, and I shouldn't have had to go looking for a way to fix the program after I install an update.
This also happened for the first time last month, and I spent a day trying to figure out what was going on. I was pretty scared, thinking that my computer was completely compromised. After trying to re-install and trouble-shoot based on AVG suggestions to no avail, the problem resolved itself after I restarted the computer one last time.
So tell people that AVG does not send out notices, even if they've paid for a license (I have Pro). Users need to check the AVG site periodically to see if they need updates. My computer is set up to do automatic updates, but evidently they don't always work for AVG and you have to download it manually. Also, if they get any error messages from their op system about problems with the program, they should go to the AVG site right away and check in the trouble-shooting section.
Sad to say, I've begun to have doubts about using this program. What use is an anti-virus program if it's always out of date, or worse, turned off, through no action I've taken.
Kathleen
Just recently, I am not getting an indication from avg-free that browsed websites are virus-free by avg's "green" arrow checkmark. Anyone know what the problem is?
I recently started using AVG for Vista, It seems Ok. However it is not an internet Security soft. is it sufficient to protect my system using vista internet security and AVG.
Hi
It's more of a question: Why should I buy the avg antivirus? Avg free gives same protection. The only difference is the support you'll get with avg antivirus?
I have a home pc that I use at my home and personal use. Do I Pay money for this Avg 8?/ If I don't pay anything… how long is the trial period for free??? I don't have the money. Reply a.s.a.p. Thanks, L.P.
I have window7 when i install avg internet sec ver that time we get error this softwear is not compatible tell microsoft what i do?