[Journalists] OT, to AVG Free antivirus Users

[Donna Hill]

May 12, 2008

Hello Friends,
What an awful day!  Yes, it's the computer, but it's OK now -- after 
only six hours of hair pulling.

If you use AVG free edition antivirus software, you should know that AVG 
7.5 free will no longer be supported with daily updates as of the end of 
May.  You can upgrade to 8.0, but what a nightmare!  I followed their 
links which gave two options for downloading.  The prefered one was at 
free downloads.com.  I had a hard time finding it there -- well, it 
wasn't just hard, I couldn't do it.  Anyway, I went back and selected 
the download from the Grisoft site.  I assumed that the reason the other 
was prefered had something to do with money changing hands; I figured 
Grisoft was paid so FreeDownload could show me their ads.  Maybe not.

After following the prompts the new AVG Free 8 was on my desktop and it 
wanted to re boot.  After the re boot, my computer did next to nothing.  
The anti spyware start up scan I use, which takes a few minutes, wasn't 
done for hours.  I couldn't open My Documents, my e mail program and so on.

Being no dummie -- no scoffing, thank you -- I figured that the 
installation must have gone amiss and resolved to uninstall it ASAP.  
Well, ASAP looked like it would take twenty-four hours.  I'm not 
exaggerating.

When my husband came home from his own nightmarish experience at the 
hospital, he tried with the mouse with no more luck than I had with 
Jaws.  Ultimately, we did a system restore which worked -- I know, it 
never worked for me before either.

Anyway, I am left scrambling as to what to do about free antivirus 
software.  I went to the Grisoft site and waded through the layers of 
stunts they force you to do before allowing you to leave a message.  I 
told them what had happened and about my reluctance to buy their new 
security suite, which Rich and I were actually considering.  I wanted to 
see if AVG free 8 would still work with Jaws.

Anyone else have issues with this?  Anyone have any recommendations?
Donna Hill




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