Security Update Problems
I have been using the free antivirus from AVG on my computers for a while now. Just recently they started displaying nag screens about buying their new version 8 security suite. A couple of days ago I found out that the paid version 8 wasn’t the only new release and decided to download the free version 8 to take a look.
All I can say is what a terrible job that they have done as I ended up wasting about 10 hours attempting to install this new program only to end up having trouble finding a copy of the old program (the one that actually works) to reinstall in place of the new mess.
I guess part of the problem is the range of operating systems that I run with some older versions as well as newer ones.
Problem number one was fairly common with such programs and perhaps is more a feature than a problem - I couldn’t install the program from my regular login because I don’t have administrator access from there. I guess expecting administrator access to install a program is okay since that will stop programs being able to install themselves without your knowing. The really annoying ones are the ones that unnecessarily require administrator access to run. I don’t think AVG 8 falls into that category.
Problem number two was when I tried to upgrade my Windows NT computer. Apparently people running old operating systems don’t need security since the new program doesn’t support that operating system (even though there shouldn’t be any significant differences).
Next on to try installing on the old computer I use to read my emails (which runs XP). The first issue with this attempt is that yet again the C drive on the computer (which is only 4Gb) was again running very low on space. I deleted a load of old security log files and it still didn’t help much so I moved the windows swap file to the D and F drives so as to free up that space on the drive and also hopefully speed the computer since the swap file and operating system would then be on different physical disks). Now I had enough room to attempt the install.
The next problem apart from the long delay while the install program loaded was that it complained about other security software running on the computer and insisted that it be turned off. Now all I was trying to replace was my antivirus (since I use other software for all my other security needs) and so I assumed that meant that it wanted me to delete version 7.5 before attempting to install version 8. I did so and tried again and it popped up the same alert. Obviously the stupid thing didn’t know what it wanted so I told it to ignore that and get on with the install. A couple of hours later there was still next to nothing happening with the install so I decided to abandon the program as useless and reinstall the old version.
Unfortunately the copy of the old program I had saved was rather old and not all of the upgrades were still available to bring it back up to date and AVG had seen fit to remove the more recent version that was still supported from their site. Trying to get that install to work wasted several more hours. Eventually I gave up on that and cursed the stupidity of AVG staff and ran a search of the internet to find somewhere else that I could download the version of AVG that works from. Eventually I found somewhere and several hours later again have my email computer back to normal.
Unfortunately it seems that AVG is going to turn of support for the version of their software that works at the end of the month so that gives me two weeks to find an alternative antivirus that actually works and is still supported.
Tags: antivirus, avg, operating system, operating systems, security software, software problems