AVG users !!!

AVG are NOT my fav people after my recent experience!!

The other week I contacted AVG (www.avg.com) by telephone to renew the licence on my anti virus software which was due to expire on 27th November. They advised that the product I had (AVG 9) was no longer supported and I would get a free update to AVG 2011 – the current product. Fine – I paid £53.23 for two computers to be protected for 2 years. I was sent the download link – and I downloaded and installed the software as per the instructions.

At the end of the ‘successful installation’ I was prompted to restart the computer. When I did this windows failed to start and I was faced with a totally black screen! I tried again – same result. I called AVG back on the number I had used not half and hour before and was told to contact their support people on 0844 894 1000 – this I did. The person I spoke to advised me that the problem was caused by a virus! I explained I had been using AVG 9 – properly kept up to date and it had not reported any problems – nor had the computer shown any signs of a problem until the installation. He said the problem now was the AVG 9 product was no longer on my machine and the new product had not in fact installed properly – leaving my machine helpless and impossible to fix myself. Not to worry though – they could connect remotely and fix it for me – it would take around an hour maybe – and they would charge me £70 for fixing it!! I was not happy but I had to go along with that – it was 5 pm on a Friday night and I needed my machine to work with!

After giving my credit card details I was put onto an engineer who did fix things – after around 2 hours. At the end of the re-install – the engineer advised me that the new product was not compatible with my version of windows (XP Pro) and he would have to uninstall it again and re-install the product I had before all this trauma – AVG 9 – which their sales people had just told me was no longer supported!

It seems to me totally wrong that they should have charged for this – I was using their product to protect my computer – I upgraded at their suggestion to the newer product – for increased protection – although the engineer did say they were having a lot of ‘issues’ with the new product as it was still officially in BETA!!!

I felt helpless and totally ripped off. With the best of intentions I spent £50+ to update my licence and through a failing in their product was forced to waste two hours of my time – deal with a fair amount of stress – and pay another £70 to have things put right again – i.e. the status quo! A nice little protection racket for AVG.
 
Get your CC company to seek a refund for both the purchase price of AVG11 and the engineers costs, as you were wrongly advised by the retailer; ie they sold you a product was incompatible with your OS.
 
It was all with a debit card - not a credit card :(
 
See if you can get your bank to chase it then. Failing that take it to the Small Claims Court.
 
Agreed, don't let the sods off with that!
 
Maybe but it caused no end of problems with my Windows 7 64 bit.

It's now been binned and I'm using AVast instead. Which incedentaly doesn't say everything called Keygen is a virus and go off deleteing half the stuff on your drive.

I use a file called keygen that generates codes legitimately for a peice of software. The latest AVG trashed my machine as soon as it saw it.

Luckily I have a set of backup disks that I can reload and fix my PC in just about 1/2hr at no cost to me.
 
I just sat tonight and removed AVG of my windows XP system.
The 2011 version is way too bloated and slowed things right down.

Didn't realise AVG is such a b****r to remove. Thankfully its off now and avast is on instead.......what a difference!!!!!
 
:eek:

OMG, that might just explain Mr Yv's desktop machine going diddly squat last week. A XP Pro machine, as per awp's, that had just updated its free version of AVG [program not virus database] and done a windows update, so rebooted and....nada, just wont boot anymore. I have tried running all sorts of repairs via Recovery Console, but still no luck. Its a 6 or 7 year old machine from Dell and has alway been somewhat tempermental so after a few hours messing around, gave up decided it was time to call it quits and look at getting him a new one. Will have to do some more research into this and see if XP machines are being are being affected by free version program updates. :suspect:

Of course, it could be an absolute coincidence and just aDell machine reaching its 'you must buy a new Dell NOW' time limit :lol:
 
AVG messed up my machine in the past. Never used it again and I stick to Avast which was always good but has recently become brilliant in my opinion.
 
gman said:
AVG messed up my machine in the past. Never used it again and I stick to Avast which was always good but has recently become brilliant in my opinion.
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funnily enough, always use avast, but that particular machine threw strop about it, so went over to AVG earlier this year. :bonk:
 
gman said:
AVG messed up my machine in the past. Never used it again and I stick to Avast which was always good but has recently become brilliant in my opinion.
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Exactly the same story here tbh, AVG went mental so I binned it.. I run Avast on my w7 editing machine, and the wife has Avira on her XP "facebook and other internet stuffs" machine :D
 
Sort of glad I was lazy and didn't bother updating to the new version when it keeps bugging me :)
 
Sorry to hear these horror stories.

I must be the luckiest AVG user.

I have used the free version of AVG on a PC running XP(SP3) for over eight years, never had a virus and it has never causes any problems.
 
I uninstalled it over a year ago. It never found anything apart from eicar files, and just made the computer run like a dog
 
mattyh said:
Exactly the same story here tbh, AVG went mental so I binned it.. I run Avast on my w7 editing machine, and the wife has Avira on her XP "facebook and other internet stuffs" machine :D
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Ah, Avira! I used to have that running on all the work computers until the [undisciplined] girls in the office finally managed to Bebo and Face****** the hell out of the network and Avira let through a nasty data munching virus. :(

Avast seems to intergrate itself into everything and picks up loads of other non-viruses but still dodgy stuff. Oh and just lurve that sexy voice.... "virus database has been updated".... bloody voice is about 3 times louder than it needs to be and make me jump every time! haha
 
AVG free ran ok until the 2011 upgrade for my WindowsXP home Edition. It wouldn't work so I changed to Avast free which is just as good if not better and does automatic updates.

Realspeed
 
I use free AVG after getting sick of paying for Norton, they might do a good job fighting these trojans/viruses, but we who just want to use the internet aren't creating them.
I have used Avast in the past but kept getting popups. I don't know what program that's free that doesn't give ANY problems, i think we just have to live with it.
 
AVG is absolute crap - has been since version 7.5 IMO. After that they just followed the "software bloat is chic" trend and made their software into utter junk.,
 
avg knackered mine up tuesday night, just a constant loop of scrren of death, even when tried in safe mode it gets to avg drivers and screen of death, and that was on my 32 bit xp pro computer my windows 7 64 is fine as is my other 32 bit system running avg. but i will be looing around now, just as well my dads computer wizz and i have clone hds.
 
Ozei said:
You don't need AVG or any of the other 3rd party antivirus packages with Windows 7. Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) does the job perfectly well. It doesn't slow down/mess up Windows - and it's free.

http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
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I didn't like it, a few dodgy stuff got through that Avast managed to stop. Although you've got to understand just how much crap is browsed at my work.

Also, the auto-updater with MSE failed after a while and wouldn't fix.
 
Microsoft should just stop trying to do antispyware/antivirus and leave it to the people that know how, as every time they try it just turns into utter junk. Having said that, IMO they do firewalls really well.
 
trencheel303 said:
Microsoft should just stop trying to do antispyware/antivirus and leave it to the people that know how, as every time they try it just turns into utter junk. Having said that, IMO they do firewalls really well.
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MS Essentials is actually one of the better AV programs around (paid or free), probably because they bought an AV company and rebranded their program. (the original name escapes me at present, sure some will be along to help with the name).

It is so well integrated with W7 that any W7 user should definitely think about changing to it.

Edit

MS Essentials was called Antigen before being rebranded.

http://www.directionsonmicrosoft.com/sample/DOMIS/update/2006/08aug/0806fmaps.htm


.
 
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MSE has never let anything through on my system and it doesn't screw up Windows like a few paid-for AV programs I could mention.
 
:plusone: For MS Security Essentials!

The subscription expired on my Norton, I uninstalled it, installed MSE, did it's first scan and found 3 viruses that Norton hadn't picked up. Less intrusive too.

Pete
 
i run avg and avast on my system with no problems
avg tried to get me to update to the new version but lucky for me by the sound of it would not install due to avast already being installed
close call there by the sounds of it
 
damn avg has got me
updated and trashed my pc so it wont boot anymore
aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
 
exactly what happened to me - see erlier in the thread. hope you get it fixed.
 
avg did my same computer (32bit xp) 3 times in a month and a half. i know it was avg as everytime i updated it said avg needs to restart the computer to finalise and then would not boot, but is fine on my other 32bit system xp pro to and also fine on my laptop with windows 7 64bit, now running microsoft essentails on my main one with w7 ultimate and its works spot on and doesnt slow the computer down like avg.
 
gman said:
Avast seems to intergrate itself into everything and picks up loads of other Oh and just lurve that sexy voice.... "virus database has been updated".... bloody voice is about 3 times louder than it needs to be and make me jump every time! haha
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You can turn it off, mine is :thumbs:
 
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